Guidelines for Linking
September 21, 2004 | 
47 Comments
Summary: Sharing a few of my own guidelines when it comes to links.
Every once in awhile I like to go back and talk about Web interface basics. I find it helpful to have these posts to refer back to and I feel that I’ve quite a few readers who find going “back to the basics” (for lack of a more clever phrase) really helpful. If this helps one or two of you, or gets you thinking, then it’s worth the time.
Web design and its related disciplines can get downright complicated at times and I feel that nailing the basics first (and nailing them hard) often leads to good things. One of these basics is how you handle links.
A while back we talked about visited links, and I got quite a bit out of that discussion. This last week I’ve had several conversations about linking in general. One resulted in a slight change to the color of my active links here, in order to increase the visual contrast (which still probably isn’t done as well it should be), and the other was about the “clickability” of buttons—or lack thereof—which is a big pet peeve of mine.
So, I’d like to throw out a few of my own guidelines, some ideas and hopefully get your take on linking.
A Few Guidelines I (Usually) Follow
I’ve got a few general rules that I usually follow when it comes to links. Of course there are exceptions to these guidelines, but in most cases I feel these are the way to go. I’ve based these guidelines on research, my observations of users and my own experience using and designing for the Web.
They’re not set in stone and I do break them when needed.
Underline Links In Content
To me this is as close to a rule as you can get for Web interface. It might not be the best way, but let’s face it—it’s a convention whether we like it or not. I don’t feel color is enough to visually identify a link and don’t feel underlining breaks up the content flow enough to warrant not using them.
I do have quite a bit of perspective on this as I’ve seen many users overlook links that aren’t underlined. Unless you don’t want users to see and or click your links in content (which could very well be the case) you should keep them underlined. Users and readers know what an underline means on the Web—it means a link. Period.
(For that very reason it’s probably not a good idea to underline anything that isn’t a link.)
Having said all of that, it is much less common a practice than I’d have ever thought. I did quite a bit of research into this and there are many, many Web sites out there that rely solely on color or some other way to highlight links. In fact a Google search for “underlining links” comes up with a bunch of tutorials about how to remove underlines from links.
An alternative idea, if you feel underlined links hamper readability, is to not link in content at all and have a list of actionable links at the end of your content.
Links Need To Look Like Links
It’s somewhat related to the last point, and I don’t see this quite as much, but there are times when a Web page will have a call to action, or a non-underlined link in a strange spot that just doesn’t look like a link, either because of it’s appearance or it’s location on the page.
For example, having a solitary, call to action link right next to a simple bulleted list of secondary navigation items may be confusing to a user if it’s not set apart visually.
Although it may not help a whole lot, it’s important to, again, underline links that could cause confusion for a user. Better yet, make calls to actions into buttons and separate them from content and navigation. Which brings me to my next point.
Navigation Should Stand Out
Your navigation elements should carry some distinct visual differences that help set them apart from other links on your pages. For many sites this isn’t a problem, but I do come across sites that use navigation that is, well, too plain.
If your navigation looks too much like links on your pages you run the risk of having a user mistake it for something it’s not. A list of general links, for example, as opposed to links to help navigate the site.
This can be avoided by proper titling of you navigation links and designing them to visually stand out. It’s not rocket science, but worth pointing out.
Links Should Be Titled Properly
Link text and navigation labeling can be tricky to say the least. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who’s agonized over the proper text for a link. And, yeah, I think there are times when “Click Here” does work.
It’s not preferable, but hey, sometimes the alternatives are worse.
In general I like to make this text actionable unless it’s a navigation item. For primary and secondary navigation I like to keep it short and as clear as possible. I use common labels and avoid clever wording.
I’ve seen many users frustrated by unclear labels, both within navigation and on linked text within content. A user should be able to fairly accurately predict where any given link is going to take them. It’s very interesting to stop a user before they click a link and ask them what they think will be on the other side. The results are often surprising and can tell you loads about the quality of your link text.
Use The Title Attribute Where Appropriate
The title attribute can help give the user some more information or context and should be used when it makes sense and as a supplement to clear link text. Do not rely on titles alone to help a user understand where the link will take them.
I don’t make extensive use of them as I feel if you put effort into your link text, the title isn’t as important. As well, I’m not sure they ad much value when they pretty much reiterate the text or label.
Visited Links Should Change State or Color
This is a bit of a sticky one, but I feel that it’s probably preferable to have your visited links change color, or noticeable shade, and state. I don’t have a whole lot of data to back this up, and, to be honest in my experience observing users I’ve never seen them react to the state change of visited links at all.
This doesn’t mean it’s not helpful. I make use of visual cues on visited links quite a bit and find it helpful myself.
Then again, I pretty much break this rule on my own site. Call it a design decision based on my perceived understanding of my audience. One that can be overturned if I find out it’s an issue.
Buttons Should Work Like Buttons
If you are using buttons for navigation or calls to action, they should look, and behave like buttons. In specific what I mean by that is; the whole button should be clickable. When I come across a button with “dead” areas it drives me up a wall and I’ve seen users frustrated by this as well. If it looks like a button the entire area of the button should be able to be clicked. Sounds like common sense, but it’s way too common to come across a link that looks like a button, but you can only click the text, for example.
It makes you stop and think for a second and it puts a damper on the overall user experience. It’s also something that, in most cases, should be easy to fix.
Bigger Buttons Are Easier To Use
As well, a bigger is usually better. I’ve seen users struggle with small buttons. I’m not sure what the minimum size should be, or even it there is one, but in general a bigger button is easier to use.
And then there is Fitts Law.
When in doubt, either test or make it bigger.
Further Resources
To be honest, when researching this stuff I didn’t find a whole lot of good resources specifically for links. It’s one of the reasons I decided to write my own guidelines up, hopefully they’ll be helpful. I did find a few resources worth sharing, and I’m hoping some of you can add to that list in the comments.
*Dunstan on link presentation and Fitts Law
* Jakob’s Guidelines for Visualizing Links
* Jakob’s Guidelines for Link Titles
Your Take On Linking
These are my guidelines and I realize there is quite a bit of room for discussion and I’d like to get your feelings on this. Do you disagree with my guidelines, or have guidelines of your own? I’d particularly like to hear from anyone who’s done specific user testing or observation in regards to links. The work I’ve done has been in the context of more general, overarching testing.
While I feel these guidelines are pretty solid, there are times when they don’t make sense and when it’s probably alright to bend or break them. As with anything, if you really want to make an informed design decision, understand your goals, understand your audience and test, test, test.
Filed under: IA and Usability
Comments
1. Abel Rios said:
My thoughts on linking exactly how you put it. Nice article, as usual.
Posted on September 21, 2004 10:51 AM | #
2. Rob Mientjes said:
I normally style links in content like this:
:link - mostly underlined, standing out by colour.
:hover - mostly de-underlined, changing heavily in shade or hue of colour.
:active - normally a somewhat different shade of colour.
:visited - a desaturated version of the :link, so you can easily spot the visited sites and the ones that you haven’t seen.
I think that’s the better way to do it, but hey, that’s just me.
Also, underlining text that’s not a link has driven me crazy. I hate people who use pointless underlines. Ferchrissakes, it’s meant to be a replacement of the italic, from the typewriter era! Don’t use it to emphasize on things!
Really, people do.
Posted on September 21, 2004 10:55 AM | #
3. Matthew Pennell said:
I have pretty much the same opinion as Rob, and agree with all your guidelines, Keith.
I wonder if it’s relevant to mention taborder in a discussion about links. Occasionally I will tab between links on a site (usually when I’m holding on to a wriggling child with my mouse hand), and it always frustrates me when the next selected link is not the one I expect it to be. I guess the problem is being compounded by CSS-driven sites, where the order that links appear in the code may not necessarily match the visual cues of the site design.
In these circumstances (or within a specific interface scenario), specifying a taborder can be useful for a minority of users.
Posted on September 21, 2004 11:35 AM | #
4. Roger Johansson said:
Great guidelines. Sites that follow them are usable and give a professional impression. I think “Links Should Be Titled Properly” is especially important to avoid the amateurish look of “click here to read more” or “more info can be found here”.
Posted on September 21, 2004 11:42 AM | #
5. Colly said:
Good to keep such basics on the table, Keith, with new/inexperienced designers seeking clarity all the while. I personally feel it’s very important to reiterate such fundamentals - maybe we are often guilty of only looking to break new ground and impress our peers in our posts. Interface considerations are too important to lose sight of.
Don’t forget this conversation featuring more from Keith about links.
Posted on September 21, 2004 12:38 PM | #
6. i&ta said:
Pretty much agree with everything above but on another tangent I’d like to share that more and more I use bloglines to read recent postings. In today’s post when clicking the link “we talked about visited links” from within bloglines, a 404 error page rears its ugly head due to the relative structure of the link.
I had been hemming and hawwing over what to with my linking (direct or relative?) within rss/xml-available, esp. because I had to insert “../../../../../../” just to get all the relative links on my site to work (once the pages were reached through heavy drill-down due to categories, search, etc), but this may seal the deal for me. What positives arise that outweigh the negatives in this case?
Or perhaps I simply must rewrite my PHP code, I don’t know. For now, it is easier to write full paths and do a search and replace later should I learn PHP or change my site structure, which is doubtful due to permalinking.
Posted on September 21, 2004 12:42 PM | #
7. Keith said:
i&ta –I don’t know all of the issues here, but in my experience root level relative links are the way to go. I’ve had way to many problems with absolute links.
The issue you have seems to me to be something of a fault within bloglines display. Should they not be able to account for that? I don’t know, but I’m not going to switch to absolute for those links.
Guess you’ll just have to click on through and visit the site! ;)
Posted on September 21, 2004 12:49 PM | #
8. Gabriel Mihalache said:
:visited is useless for real-time applications. (99% of the stuff I do, the 1% being my home page where I’m guilty as charged). Also, the visited link color change is the least know feature among end users. I actually saw people confused by the darkened color (the person in question concluded that that page was more important ;)
I noticed that many designers get “possessed” by the spirit of Nielsen. Overall, it’s a good thing, I guess. Hopefully, 7nights.com/asterisk won’t start looking like useit.com or we’ll need to organize an intervention :p
Posted on September 21, 2004 12:51 PM | #
9. Keith said:
Gabriel – I agree about visited links. Most users don’t use them and for many kinds of interaction they’re useless. I do like them in content and for some links and I personally use them quite a bit in the right context.
Don’t worry about me being “possessed” by Nielsen. The only reason why he’s even referenced in this post is because I couldn’t find any other resources on this subject. It was pretty damn surprising…
Posted on September 21, 2004 12:56 PM | #
10. Geoffrey said:
I’ve always thought that underlined links work best when they bring attention to themselves, like inside a block of text. This emphasizes the “hyper” part of linking to outside sources. Where I sometimes think underlining doesn’t work is when it’s already within the context of navigation. A long list of links on a sidebar, for instance, doesn’t take advantage of underlining in the same way. In this case everything is emphasized, so nothing is. And since we already have context, why impair the readability?
In short, I try to aim for underlines on all links that live inside of text blocks. In the case of navigation or “link-farms” I try determine whether or not the context of the links themselves is enough.
Posted on September 21, 2004 01:15 PM | #
11. Lars said:
Great write-up Keith. I will have to revisit the post on visited links, but either way I think I’d like to see them differentiated from non-visited links. It saves you time revisiting already visited links. Now if everyone used informative link text this wouldn’t be an issue, but they don’t…
As for underlining, you certainly have a point. But bold links seem to have become really common too, so people should be getting used to them, shouldn’t they?
On a sidenote, I find that a bottom-border adds a little more breathing room under the letters than an underline. It’s also useful for applying different colors to the text and the underline.
Posted on September 21, 2004 01:26 PM | #
12. Rob Mientjes said:
Bold links do interfere with strong and even b or font-weight: bold. That would just be irritating, such as underlining text for focus and emphasis. It could be a matter of style, but it’s not logical.
Posted on September 21, 2004 01:31 PM | #
13. Joel said:
Although often up for debate, I find that generally, I like to use Jakob’s advice. A distinguishable link colour, probably a dotted underline, a:hover will light up and be a bit brighter, and visited “dulled out.”
There seems to be logic with it, so, hey. Let’s use it. =)
Posted on September 21, 2004 01:35 PM | #
14. Andy said:
On the whole I think that visited links are un-necessary. I think that the overal site structure should operate in such a way as to make knowing whether you have selected a link or not obsolete. By this I mean that a well thought out and logical site structure would provide links where they would be needed, and avoid them where they are superfluous.
Exceptions to this are pages such as site maps, or lists of on topic posts, where long lists of links are unavoidable, and where showing as visited would be useful.
With regards to underlining I would defer to the standard behaviour in many cases for links and make other forms of underline, such as abbreviations, stand out as non-link like; for example, by using a dashed bottom border. Users understand the default behaviour, as for many of us we have learned our way through various browser versions, and sites where CSS is poorly implimented, if at all.
All of these issues are likely to be far more important, in terms of the way trends leads us, for generations who have grown up without 5+ browsers so I think we all need to watch each other closely to make sure the trends don’t switch. Back to basics is without doubt important and necessary.
Posted on September 21, 2004 01:58 PM | #
15. Lars said:
Rob, I agree on the interference thing. The trick is to choose different colors for links and strong/b. It’s not an easy trick though, so for the most part underlined text will be preferable. My only problem with underlined text is that it’s harder to make look good.
Posted on September 21, 2004 02:04 PM | #
16. Rob Mientjes said:
It also looks like crap indeed, Lars. But for links, it Just Works®. Choosing colous should be done wisely, because of the colour blinds that live among us, and I value every reader of my site. That makes it all very hard, and is you have a limited colour pallette, you have to perform magic to make it work.
I don’t discourage anyone, but please, act wisely.
Posted on September 21, 2004 02:09 PM | #
17. Keith said:
Geoff – I agree with you, as long as it’s clear that it’s navigation–that is the key. Then again, I don’t think underlines hamper readablity near as much as some people think. I do think, for example, that if I pulled the underlines from my sidebar lists it would proably be ok, but only as long as there is something else (the context you talk about) to identify them as links.
All to often I see non-underlined links in a sidebar or part of an interface that aren’t in a list or clearly marked as navigation. This stuff is very, very confusing. I see it quite often with a single item call-to-action that really shouldn’t be a link at all, rather a button.
Great point though. You’re method of checking to see if there is enough context is probably all you need to do.
Posted on September 21, 2004 02:25 PM | #
18. Geoffrey said:
I should add that even though I sometimes turn underlining off in certain navigational context, I always add some sort of hover state to said links. Having underlining visible on a hover state is a great way to provide visual feedback, and does the job much better than color alone.
Keith: On your sidebar I don’t find the underlining distracting as much, maybe because it’s so neat and orderly. But on sites like Jessie James Garret’s (who I admire a great deal!) I think the underlining becomes overkill, and produces the opposite of the desired effect. But this very well may be just a personal preference.
Posted on September 21, 2004 02:49 PM | #
19. Peter said:
So why are your links in the content of this article not underlined, Keith? :-)
Re colour, I think it was Nielsen who recently suggested that :link should be a vibrant colour and visited should be a faded shade of the same color, thus retaining a visual clue that it is related. If visited is another colour then the mental connection may be broken. Also the different color may be the same colour for a color blind person, but faded or washed-out should appear different to anyone.
Posted on September 21, 2004 02:54 PM | #
20. Keith said:
Peter – They are. You probably have the underlines turned off in your browser.
Your point on color is valid, but I don’t feel color alone is enough.
Posted on September 21, 2004 03:03 PM | #
21. Keith Bell said:
David Siegel (yeah, remember him?) used to advocate red for unvisited links, and I think there was some merit in his argument. As for underlines… I’ve always had a strong interest in typography, so underlined text was anathema to me. When CSS came along, the first thing I wanted to do was turn off underlining. But after years of reading web pages, now I have to agree with Keith that it doesn’t distract as much as it once did for me. And it has the advantage that links still stand out for folks with deficiencies in their colour vision.
Sometimes I favour a fairly hot colour for unvisited links, with the visited link colour the same as the normal text colour so that it recedes, save for the underlink.
Posted on September 21, 2004 03:43 PM | #
22. Keith said:
Keith B. – I don’t like underlining either as a typographical element. And if it were up to me I’d go back in time and change that convention. But I can’t do that and as non-ideal as it is, underlining links is a convention that, I feel anyway, is here to stay.
And yeah, I do remember David Siegal. One of my first Web design reads was Creating Killer Web Sites – back in oh, 1996 or so. Not THAT long a go.
Posted on September 21, 2004 04:08 PM | #
23. Peter said:
Thanks, Keith, I did not know I had underlines off. The reason relates to proper titling so is only slightly off-topic.
I just started using Opera 7.54. In the Page Style section of Preferences you can set Author mode options. There is a setting for My Link Style which should really be called Author Link Style. I had this deselected so I didn’t get the default blue and purple underlines of My Link Style. Turns out it needs to be selected to see how the author wants the page to look.
Posted on September 21, 2004 05:15 PM | #
24. Seth Thomas Rasmussen said:
On the subject of buttons, I absolutely hate buttons that have huge visual importance and furthermore visual styling that indicates a visual behavior, but that when you hover or click…
Nothing.
To me, that is a major interaction faux-pas. When I select a floor in an elevator, I am expecting that the button will depress, change color or something to indicate that I’ve performed an action, or sometimes more importantly, that an action is even possible.
Just Watch the Sky is the obvious example of this that comes to mind for me. While being visually stunning, his main navigation and the assorted graphical buttons littered throughout the site annoy the hell out of me. The site feels dead, though the lack of updates contributes to that as well. But make no mistake, no interactivity fosters that feeling just as much.
Even worse are visual elements that look like buttons but which do NOTHING. This is the worst worst worst thing in the world, ‘cause even though you figure it out the first time, every time you see that you think, “button!” almost before you can even remember that you know what the word means. I’m trying to recall where I saw a glaring example of this… ah, I can’t.
Posted on September 21, 2004 05:37 PM | #
25. Matthew Oliphant said:
Here is some more information on the usability of links from our good friends at usability.gov.
They still say to make links blue and underlined, but more a note (which I think is more important) to make links easy to notice.
The good thing about usability.gov is that it points to research they base their findings on. So as you said that you didn’t find much on the topic, this might lead to more information.
Posted on September 22, 2004 08:23 AM | #
26. Christian Watson said:
This is my preference as well. However, I was recently interested to read that the W3C recommend against putting verb phrases in link text.
I don’t plan to change the way I write my links, but I would love to know the reasoning behind their recommendation.
Posted on September 22, 2004 08:36 AM | #
27. nick santilli said:
the designer in me tends to take over from time to time. In those cases, I wrangle with the style I want to apply to my links. I always want them to stand out, but how is the question.
I like the effect when the link seems to solidify when the cursor passes over it - something like the in-page links here: http://www.d2.co.za/index.aspx
(that’s just the example I had off the top of my head)
but the point - as you’ve clearly made keith - is that the link needs to be obvious. the mouse-over action is just added bonus I suppose. but with out the obviousness, people like my dad would view websites as being a single, self contained page. So I *TRY* to design with people like him in mind. ;)
that said, I started tinkering with some different link styles a couple weeks ago, and then got busy with other stuff. examples here: http://vulio.com/play/css_by_container.html
to me, both are obvious, but the second is more stylized and different (get it? red stop, green go…). so while I think it’s cool, and unique, that probably won’t get the point across to my dad and similar users…
all good points Keith. You really put a lot of good thought into your writing and design. it’s nice to have someone that keeps the thought process grounded.
Posted on September 22, 2004 08:46 AM | #
28. chrispian said:
The only thing I have to add to this is about visited links. Most of the time the visited color is so similar to the link color that once you’ve visted half the links it’s no longer clear which ones you’ve visted or not. It reminds me of scroll bar colors too. I’ve seen quite a few sites that you can’t tell which part is the scroll bar and which one is the track. Argh!
Posted on September 22, 2004 11:58 AM | #
29. Ian Firth said:
Seriously, have people still not learned how to use something as simple as a browser and the web in 10 years ?
I make my links a contrasting color, and sometimes I make them bold too. If someone can’t find a link on one of my pages, they have my sympathy, but nothing more.
Posted on September 22, 2004 01:10 PM | #
30. Carol said:
I’m glad someone else out there hates the idea of buttons. For me, they’re nothing but an annoyance, and now that I know I’m not alone – I will forever banish buttons from any new sites I design.
Could someone please be so kind as to visit my newly designed blog and give me some pointers where the links are concerned (navigation and within the text) – I want to make sure that they’re clear enough – and perhaps I should do away with the “visited link” color?
I’m still tweaking the CSS, but I want to at least make everything clear to the site visitor. It’s just a personal site, but I don’t want people to leave out of frustration.
Thanks for this great site – it’s really informative.
Posted on September 22, 2004 05:15 PM | #
31. Gordon said:
The argument for Bigger Buttons should also be applied to links. I learnt that one back in 96 at a course (Basic HTML, grey pages, Times New Roman… memories…).
I never understand people who link one word of a pertinent sentence, makes it much harder to ‘hit’.
As for the colour issue I apply several types of coloured links on my site - depending on context and location of the link. I’m pretty sure that no-one has missed a link on my site.
As you say, getting back to basics is the key to solving a lot of ‘issues’. I use this technique a lot myself. Good stuff.
Posted on September 23, 2004 03:10 AM | #
32. Chris Fenison said:
Great article, and great follow up comments by everyone. Makes for a very good, although long, read.
Posted on September 23, 2004 10:50 AM | #
33. Seth Thomas Rasmussen said:
Who’s against buttons? Poorly designed buttons, i.e. ones that show no or poor behavior other than the cursor changing to a finger (arguably enough, but yes, see my previous point), are another issue entirely.
Buttons are vital. A link is a button, really…
Posted on September 23, 2004 11:11 AM | #
34. Takver said:
Keith, a thoughtful piece well worth reading.
From doing my own sites I have tended to keep close to conventions: unvisited links use underlining and a different color to the text, usually blue. Visited links are underlined in purple. Active or hover state links are in a bright color or change the background color of the text as a highlight.
As my sites do tend to provide many links in the main text content of the site, I think it very important that users can easily differentiate both unvisited and visited links.
I try to keep any site navigation links at the top of each page, a navigation bar down the left, sometimes a breadcrumb line at the top, and sometimes further information links on the bottom of a page. Users look for navigation in these areas. To deviate from this expectation, navigation must stand out to be effective.
Useability and readability should always be important considerations in site design. Linking is one of the most basic functions of webpages but also one of the most important to get correct for maximum useability.
Posted on September 23, 2004 07:27 PM | #
35. Carol said:
Okay, perhaps I misunderstood your comments above with regard to buttons.
I’m still not fond of them, though, and would like to see people use more text links.
Posted on September 24, 2004 08:43 AM | #
36. Jonathan Holst said:
I don’t totally agree on this. Maybe it’s just my own little hatred, but I can’t stand :visited-colors. Even though it may be userfriendly and that, I really can’t stand it. Don’t ask me why.
Posted on September 24, 2004 10:57 AM | #
37. WebStractions said:
The text of a link, where appropriate, should keep general SEO in mind. Anchor text is the most powerful factor of ranking in the SERPS to date.
With that in mind, image links (buttons) should be a secondary form of linking. When it comes to Google, however, they have demonstrated the use of the Alt attribute of the IMG element in place of actual text. Therefore, be mindful of using this attribute with strong keywords. As with the Title attribute, do not stuff it full of repetitive keywords … that is spamming.
Posted on September 24, 2004 11:51 PM | #
38. Lars said:
Well, as a result of Keith’s posts and the many comments, I now have a new link style. Advance apologies to Jonathan and everyone else who hates visited link colors, but they are a vital part of weblog posts.
Posted on September 25, 2004 08:07 AM | #
39. Irina said:
I think that time comes in every field when it is appropriate to check again the basics. Thanks for your guidelines.
Posted on September 25, 2004 01:19 PM | #
40. Small Paul said:
Guess I kinda missed the boat on this one in my week off, but I found this quite a good point:
http://www.wats.ca/articles/linkstyles/61.
Posted on September 27, 2004 10:20 AM | #
41. xman said:
Underlining links is ugly and just horrible. First thing I do when I configure a browser is to turn off underlining - it conflicts with too many typefaces for a start and it just looks nasty. One reason I won’t use Safari is that it doesn’t let me turn off underlining. I would turn them off in my CSS but don’t because people have been lead by the nose into thinking that links have to be underlined and so they moan. Do not encourage people in this deluded idea! A simple colour differentiation is all that is needed.
Posted on September 27, 2004 02:18 PM | #
42. Keith said:
xman – and for the color blind? Look, you might not like the way they look, but it’s a convention none the less. To call this idea deluded is simply ridiculous.
Are underlining links the best way to identify them as such? Maybe not, but we’re stuck with it.
Posted on September 27, 2004 02:31 PM | #
43. Carol said:
Keith, would a colourblind person be unable to see that there was a colour shift? They may not be able to see a change from red to yellow, yes – but would they be able to see the difference between light and dark? Would using two very distinct colours work? (Such as….dark blue and a very light green.)
Posted on September 28, 2004 09:23 AM | #
44. Keith said:
Carol – I think this depends. Some folks (low vision, etc.) have problem with contrast as well. I’m not an expert in this, by any means, but I’m pretty sure you can’t go wrong with a simple underline.
Posted on September 28, 2004 11:08 AM | #
45. Marc Broad said:
Carol, Keith -
The problems with colour shifts for colour blindness are interesting and varied.
If we take it right down to grayscale then a colour shift is only noticible if the saturation, or brightness change - not the hue.
Two colours with equal saturation and brightness will appear as the same shade of gray when totally de-saturated.
I tend to drop a grayscale adjustment layer over screen grabs and alter saturation / brightness to test if links are still legible
Your comment on Dark blue to Light green would seem to be noticeable (My manager has slight colour blindness.. a colour blind programmer - there is a joke in there somewhere)
But I would echo Keith’s sentiment - worrying about that kind of becomes a null point when you could simply underline …
Posted on September 28, 2004 07:01 PM | #
46. Carol said:
I do think you have a point about the underline – no matter what degree of colour blindness the visitor has, at least they can see an underline. And yes, I agree that it’s far easier to underline than worry about hue and saturation. :-)
Posted on October 3, 2004 09:15 AM | #
47. Luke said:
I know it’s late in the game, but I’d like to throw another linking component out there.
Not only should link states be consistent, but behaviour should be, too. How many times have you clicked on a hyperlink only to open a 10MB PDF in the same browser window? Everything stops. Frustration starts.
Or been confused as to why the back button is not available (oh, this must be a new browser window that opens up seamlessly without my knowing it).
I try to let the user know what is going to happen when they click on the link, and at the very least open PDFs in a new browser window.
Just my two cents…
PS: I find visited link colors critical. Imagine trying to download/open 20 items on a page, and having to stop in the middle and come back. Hmmm, where did I leave off…oh the links tell me so.
Posted on October 12, 2004 12:53 PM | #
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