I'm *very* much against this. It's standard
convention for links on the
web to be underlined; not doing so (on top of changing the standard
colors) makes them practically invisible. I've been on sites where I
literally couldn't tell what was a link and what wasn't short of putting
the cursor over every word, because some smartass webmaster decided that
links should be bold, not underlined, and the same color as regular
text, and would use the same bold for simple emphasis...
Yeah, I'm sure we've all had those problems when surfing. *grin* Now that
I think about it more (my last email was shot off rather quickly, typing as
I thought of the ideas), I agree that sticking with the underline
conventions for links is probably the best thing to do.
It's the underlines, though, that effect readability in link-ridden articles
the most, at least for me. But, then again, I'm mildly colorblind, so the
contrast between bright colors (say, bright red or blue against a bright
white background) tends to stress and distract my eyes (especially when
bright red is butted up against bright green, it sometimes makes my eyes
almost water). The extra brightness from the underlines doesn't help. A
link here and there doesn't bug my eyes, it's when an article is
link-ridden, when there's two, three, or more links on each line for a few
lines, etc.
How about this: Have link underlines be dashed, similar to the way
<acronym> is rendered in most browsers. Then on hover, the dashed-underline
becomes the traditional underline. Is that even possible with CSS1/2? If
it's not, it should be, as it'd be a nice feature.
If the dashed underline thing isn't possible, I suppose I'm the colorblind
minority, so I can just put up with full underlines. However, it would help
if the reds and blues were toned down a bit, if they weren't so terribly
bright.
Okay, I'm done now,
Derek
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