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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