title: submitting a form using jquery's .validate function
body: <p>this is a simple question.  I have a form that is being validated using jquery's .validate function.  </p>
  
  <p>The problem is that validating only seems to work when I submit the form using: <code>&lt;input type='submit' /&gt;</code></p>
  
  <p>However, I would like to use my own custom button using instead: <code>&lt;button type="submit"&gt;click to submit&lt;/button&gt;</code> .... or use something like... <code>&lt;a onclick="submitFunction ()"&gt;click to submit&lt;/a&gt;</code></p>
  
  <p>These last two options however, do not trigger jquery's validate function.  Is there a way around this?  Thanks for the help in advance!</p>