Active buttons on the site

Here I meet such a situation, moreover, in the overwhelming majority of sites. Take a modern web2.0 project, there is a main menu, links and buttons, necessarily huge, in aqua-style, even with shadows. And what amazes me, Duc menus and links are always active, that is, when you hover (: hover) (and sometimes on click (: active)), they respond and wink. Buttons are almost always static, no reaction can be seen. Dear designers, explain to me why such wretchedness? It personally annoys me when on the site almost all elements are active and wink with effects, but the buttons are not! Here, for example, I was hustling through Smashing Magazine and at random we open any sites that come across there. Here is the first thing that came across . On the main page there is a hefty “Next” button, if you click it, the content will scroll and it will be the same but small button, and now it is already active! But on the main page, no button is active. Menus, links - yes, and buttons - no. Here it is , everything is fine, but the buttons are not. And there are thousands of such examples.
Is it really so difficult to make a frame of a different color, or change the color of the gradient, or somehow highlight the fact that this is an active element on the page? Why do tons of CSS with all sorts of effects be written for links and menus, and very rarely for buttons? What is the difficulty? I am far from being a designer, I am a programmer, and even for me it was not difficult for me to create a simple button with a shadow that responds to user actions in a short time, since CSS tutorials are not measured.
So what's the deal? Maybe I don’t understand something, or is there some intent about alien and usability of buttons?