Magnus Manske wrote:
Would it be sufficient to have links not underlined, *but* show the underline when passing over them with the mouse? IMHO the average user can be expected to fiddle with the mouse, especially if there are no obvious links ("what? no links? let's try this...")
Yuck. I see no reason to do this. What's the advantage?
I hate to waste even one second of the precious brain power of our visitors going "what? no links?" Why make people do that?
I'd say that fanciness should be an option. In general, we should appeal to the lowest common denominator. _Everyone_ should _immediately_ know what to do on our website.
Like Yahoo. I once heard someone complaining about how ugly Yahoo's web design is. Yeah, but they're the most popular website in the world. Yahoo does a good job of not astonishing people.
I'm taking a very "conservative" position here, but don't get me wrong. I have no problem with "middle of the road" web design, i.e. I don't have a problem with Amazon's different link colors, because it's still underlines and it's still obvious to the user what to do, and what the different colored links are.