Suggestion to promote readability of hyperlinked documents.

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Re: [Wikitech-l] Suggestion to...

Derek Moore

31 Dec 2002 31 Dec '02

8:27 a.m.

Because of the nature of Wikipedia, articles tend to get rather congested with links. All these super-bright reds and blues and gaudy underlines can sometimes get the better of an article. I was working on [[w:LAMP]] just now when my eyes just couldn't take anymore. It might be nice to find some softer colors for links, visited links, and non-existent links. And to also, via CSS, get rid of the underlines on links within the body of an article (the underlines are kinda helpful for the menus to left, above, and below articles, though [but maybe for style these underlines could be done away with, too, and instead go with bolding the font faces]). I do like red for non-existent articles, and blue for existent articles; they're just way too bright as it is. Anyways, I really think something ought to be done about this, as too many link-filled articles just look terrible, and their readability is quite degraded. It's just too distracting on the eyes, especially when you're tryin' to study the text. What do others think? _________________________________________________________________ The new MSN 8: smart spam protection and 3 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail&xAPID=42&PS=47575&P… http://www.hotmail.msn.com/cgi-bin/getmsg&HL=1216hotmailtaglines_smarts…

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Brion Vibber

31 Dec 31 Dec

10:55 a.m.

New subject: Suggestion to promote readability of hyperlinked documents.

On mar, 2002-12-31 at 00:27, Derek Moore wrote:

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What do you think of the colors in the Cologne Blue skin? (I really think we need to finish cleaning up Cologne Blue and make it, or a variant of it, the standard skin. It's a darn sight nicer looking!)

...

And to also, via CSS, get rid of the underlines on links within the body of an article

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... That said, I've no objection to removing the forced underline from our style definitions and leaving it up to the browser settings. -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

Tomasz Wegrzanowski

12:39 p.m.

On Tue, Dec 31, 2002 at 02:55:37AM -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:

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(I really think we need to finish cleaning up Cologne Blue and make it, or a variant of it, the standard skin. It's a darn sight nicer looking!)

I'm for too.

...

And to also, via CSS, get rid of the underlines on links within the body of an article

While I don't think that underline is any problem in Latin script, it will be bad for CJK.

Magnus Manske

12:56 p.m.

Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

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On Tue, Dec 31, 2002 at 02:55:37AM -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:

(I really think we need to finish cleaning up Cologne Blue and make it, or a variant of it, the standard skin. It's a darn sight nicer looking!)

I'm for too.

BTW, should we have a JavaScript-improved skin? It could hold more functions with less cluttering of the page. If so, should it be a new one, or a variation of an existing one?

...

And to also, via CSS, get rid of the underlines on links within the body of an article

While I don't think that underline is any problem in Latin script, it will be bad for CJK.

While underlined links are useful on most web pages, IMHO they look really ugly on wikipedia, and break the "flow of the text". I can't really explain why; maybe because we're link-heavy on many pages (which in itself is a Good Thing). Maybe because I feel our pages are more like a book (in a positive way) than most web pages. Also, most of our links are internally, which IMHO *should* be indicated somehow, so the user will know that he won't leave the encyclopedia by following the link. Magnus

erik_moeller＠gmx.de

6:30 p.m.

...

I like the current menu structure of the standard skin better, especially with regard to special pages. (Also, having a heading like "Page options" if there are only three items seems like overkill.) Neither "New pages" nor "Image list" nor "Statistics" seem particularly important, and for the other special pages there no longer is the quick access drop down from the standard skin. I also think it's a bad idea to have the search box in the menu bar as it's too small. Furthermore, I can see why you want underlined links - with that skin it really is necessary because of the dark link color. That is a bad default choice because it makes the "Underline links" user preference almost useless. I do think we need to agree on a standard skin for the different language Wikipedias. Consistency is important. Regards, Erik

Tomasz Wegrzanowski

6:38 p.m.

On Tue, Dec 31, 2002 at 07:30:00PM +0100, Erik Moeller wrote:

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I do think we need to agree on a standard skin for the different language Wikipedias. Consistency is important.

It's almost impossible to agree on one skin for both Latin script and CJK Wikipedias. And consistency isn't all that important. Often we have different typografical traditions in different countries.

erik_moeller＠gmx.de

7:02 p.m.

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It's almost impossible to agree on one skin for both Latin script and CJK Wikipedias.

The Chinese and Japanese Wikipedia use the standard skin, what's your point? It's Esperanto that doesn't. Regards, Erik

Brion Vibber

7:33 p.m.

New subject: Suggestion to promote readability of hyperlinked documents.

On mar, 2002-12-31 at 11:02, Erik Moeller wrote:

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It's almost impossible to agree on one skin for both Latin script and CJK Wikipedias.

The Chinese and Japanese Wikipedia use the standard skin, what's your point? It's Esperanto that doesn't.

The Chinese stylesheet is slightly tweaked to indent paragraphs. However taw's not talking about the _present_ skin there, but the _ideal_ one. It ought to be tweaked further to be typographically CJK-friendly. -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

erik_moeller＠gmx.de

7:53 p.m.

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Fair enough, but even if we need a new skin to do that, it should be as close to the one used elsewhere as possible. There's no reason to have a different set of links everywhere. The simple truth is - many Wikipedia users are at least bilingual - most Wikipedia users probably do not change their skin. So from a usability perspective it's a good idea to have the Wikipedias look and act the same. When I first visited eo.wikipedia I wasn't even sure if this is the same software, because I hadn't seen the Cologne skin yet. Regards, Erik

Jimmy Wales

11:59 a.m.

Derek Moore wrote:

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What do others think?

I'm so old-school, I wish everything were just left at the html defaults. :-) But I defer to others on this. --Jimbo

erik_moeller＠gmx.de

6:05 p.m.

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Are you aware of the user preference "Underline links"? I think that making non-underlined links the default as well would be nicer; the argument that they are no longer recognizable as links doesn't count, as the colors are sufficiently distinct. Underlining is generally recognized as the most distracting of all styles in typesetting, which is why it is almost never used in print. There is one advantage to underlining on Wikipedia: If you have two links right next to each other: [[December 7]] [[1981]] These get underlined separately, whereas with no underlining you cannot tell whether this is one link or two links without hovering.

...

It might be nice to find some softer colors for links, visited links, and non-existent links.

It's not as bad if you turn underlining off, but I agree the colors could be nicer. On the infoAnarchy wiki I use red on a slightly gray background for non-existent pages: http://www.infoanarchy.org/wiki/ (I also use underlining there, but mostly out of laziness.) Regards, Erik

Jimmy Wales

6:10 p.m.

Erik Moeller wrote:

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I disagree. On the web, a standard blue underline that turns purple after you visit it is simple and instantly recognizable. For many web users, it is the ONLY thing that they can count on to be a link. It's very important to do what people expect. The principle of least astonishment is key. --Jimbo

erik_moeller＠gmx.de

6:59 p.m.

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I disagree. On the web, a standard blue underline that turns purple after you visit it is simple and instantly recognizable.

Blue underlined, yes; purple is almost used nowhere these days. CNN, Yahoo, Amazon, eBay etc. all don't use it. So the expecation isn't there. Blue underlined vs. blue is not such a big difference as to be confusing, and we *are* a very link-heavy site. That being said, I'm not pushing the no-underline thing. As long as I can have my user preference, I'm happy. Regards, Erik

Jimmy Wales

6:56 p.m.

Erik Moeller wrote:

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Blue underlined, yes; purple is almost used nowhere these days. CNN, Yahoo, Amazon, eBay etc. all don't use it.

Yahoo does. (blue/purple, the old default) Amazon doesn't. (blue/orange) Ebay does. (blue/purpose, the old default) CNN doesn't. (And their choice is particularly bad because visited and unvisited look so similar. blue/weird bluish greyish purple) But I agree: it isn't those exact colors that matter, it's that links should instantly look like links, and visited links should instantly look like visited links.

erik_moeller＠gmx.de

7:12 p.m.

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Erik Moeller wrote: > Blue underlined, yes; purple is almost used nowhere these days. CNN, > Yahoo, Amazon, eBay etc. all don't use it.

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Yahoo does. (blue/purple, the old default) Ebay does. (blue/purpose, the old default)

No, they don't, that's just because you have set these colors in your browser and Yahoo! and eBay use the default (i.e. no color specified on the page). Which is probably the most reasonable thing to do. Regards, Erik

Jimmy Wales

7:23 p.m.

Erik Moeller wrote:

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But I didn't set them in my browser. I didn't do anything. They just came that way. I don't fiddle with my settings, I just run whatever they give me. Most people are like that. So most people see the web the same way I see it. --Jimbo

erik_moeller＠gmx.de

7:50 p.m.

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But I didn't set them in my browser. I didn't do anything. They just came that way. I don't fiddle with my settings, I just run whatever they give me.

...

Most people are like that. So most people see the web the same way I see it.

That, again, depends on what browser they are using and what that browser's defaults are. Hopefully not every browser manufacturer is so sick to use purple as the default for visited links ;-) Regards, Erik

Jimmy Wales

7:54 p.m.

Erik Moeller wrote:

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That, again, depends on what browser they are using and what that browser's defaults are. Hopefully not every browser manufacturer is so sick to use purple as the default for visited links ;-)

To my knowledge, they are. Netscape, IE, and Mozilla have always been this way. If I remember correctly, Opera is the same way. The standard link is blue, the standard visited link is purple. I'm not saying, by the way, that we should stick to this. I've never complained too loudly about the changes that we've made already. But I do fear, sometimes, that we forget that most people don't use the web the way we do. (Well, except for me. I have the technical skills to change my browser settings, I just don't.) --Jimbo

Magnus Manske

8:08 p.m.

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...") Magnus Jimmy Wales wrote:

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Erik Moeller wrote:

That, again, depends on what browser they are using and what that browser's defaults are. Hopefully not every browser manufacturer is so sick to use purple as the default for visited links ;-)

Jimmy Wales

8:04 p.m.

Magnus Manske wrote:

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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.

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participants (6)

Brion Vibber
Derek Moore
erik_moeller＠gmx.de
Jimmy Wales
Magnus Manske
Tomasz Wegrzanowski