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Re: users who turn off underlining for links

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From: Jukka K. Korpela
Date: Aug 6, 2003 1:40PM

On Wed, 6 Aug 2003, Lori K. Brown wrote:

> Unstyled, for nearly all browsers I have ever seen, hyperlinks are blue
> and underlined.

Yes, and this poor practice has become good practice, because it is so
common. That is, although the choice was not good, it is best to avoid
disturbing it in author style sheets, except in special cases or in a
modest amount (like changing to less bright blue or removing the underline
on mouseover).

> - - and the problem we are addressing locally -- users who turn
> off the underlining of hyperlinks.

That would be their choice, and its their job the make an informed
choice. If they are completely colorblind, for example, they should take
some other action to make links look different from normal text.

> What is the best way to present hyperlinked text that makes all of these
> folks happy?

I think you take too much responsibility here. Authors should not be
required to prepare against any user actions - it would be completely
impossible in general. If you just preserve the two common default
features of link presentation (colors and underline), i.e. don't do
anything to remove or disturb then, you've done your share. Different user
agents and different users shall take it from there.

> I proposed using titles on the hyperlinks, since in some if not all
> browsers titles on hyperlinks are presented as popup tooltips. But this
> doesn't happen in all browsers, and many users are too impatient / unaware
> to hover over a linked piece of text to get the tooltip.

And it would be rather inefficient for recognizing links on a visual scan.
Besides, a tooltip is not at all a sure sign of a hyperlink.

--
Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/


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