how programmatically set button pressed state

how programmatically set button pressed state

I have some buttons on my JQM website that have regular anchors to them. When I have pressed one it turns green (that's the pressed state I suppose), which is good, then the next page loads and shows.

Now when I make such a button without an anchor it doesn't turn green when pressed anymore :(. I bind events to those buttons to make a back button and a to top button. The user doesn't get any feedback when they touch them.

Is there a way to force such a button into its (un)pressed state?

(empty anchors like href = '#' or href = '' don't help)