[Wikipedia-l] Re: Suggestion to promote readability of hyperlinked documents.

[Richard Grevers]

On 31 Dec 2002 19:59:00 +0100, Erik Moeller 
<erik_moeller=Mmb7MZpHnFY at public.gmane.org> wrote:

>> 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.
>
To add to the dilemma, Wikipedia has to distinguish between three different 
classes of link:
*Wikipedia article
*Non existant Wikipedia Article
*External link
and only for the second of these is Visited status not important. Thus 
there need to be five distinct link designations.

Most useability guidelines suggest that visited links should have a less 
distinctive marking than unvisited. I tend to use "closer to grey/black" as 
less distinctive, e.g. the two link colours for external links ought to 
have the same hue (green) but different saturation or lightness/darkness.
I currently find the red to be a little strong (giving missing articles too 
much visual weight) and the green a little weak. (using the cologne blue 
stylesheet).

With respect to underlining, thought might be given to the following 
markup, which will result in a less intrusive underline in good browsers 
(IE, unfortunately, still renders dotted as solid):
a.whatever {text-decoration:none; border-bottom: 1px dotted #ddeeff;} (I've 
used an arbitrary colour and class here). This also avoids problems where 
some browser/font combinations result in underlines striking out the bottom 
pixel-row of descenders, which impairs redability.

-- 
Richard Grevers