----- Original Message -----
From: Stephanie Sullivan <design@violetsky.net>
Date: Friday, October 4, 2002 12:24 pm
Subject: Re: what happened at Internet World 2000 -- not so long now

> on 10/4/02 1:09 PM, John Williscroft at design@icatching.co.uk wrote:
>
> > both from client pressure and our feeling
> > that they look, well, 'old-fashioned' (can anything web-based be old
> > fashioned?).
>
> Firstly, remember that what she has stated is her opinion... And
> due to some
> of the other comments at that convention, I don't know how much
> stock I'd
> put in it. :-P


Still, if you want your site to be usable, and your audience is not particularly
tech-savvy or web-savvy (that is, personal, vanity sites are excused, as are
sites designed primarily for other designers--print or web), it would behoove
you to make your at least one of the two. If you hate underlines, keep them
some shade of blue that stands out from the surrounding text (e.g., not 006666
next to black type). If blue doesn't work in your color scheme, make them
underlined. Otherwise, you risk even fairly perceptive users not being able to
find your links, or at least being frustrated with them.

Myself, while I've typically removed the underlines from links in the navbar
(except on mouseover), I've pretty much always kept them underlined and
some shade of blue elsewhere on the page (though never that garish blue that
is the browsers' default). There are quite a number of blues available, though I
tend to gravitate toward #006699 #3399CC and #3366CC.

The sites and subsites I work on are very heavy on content and links, and I
don't want my users to have to waste even a few seconds trying to figure out
what's a link and what isn't.

I've started developing a site for a friend, this week, though, where I break that
rule. He's an advertising copywriter, so most of his clients and potential users of
his site are advertising agency professionals, designers, and other people in
allied positions. For the first time, I'm making links Hunter Green (the color of his
logo and the dominant color of his site) and bold--however, they do sprout
underlines on mouseover for those browsers that support that. I may even
write a Netscape 4 stylesheet that includes underlines.

Again, you don't want people to have to guess "where are the links?" unless
you can risk alienating your users by frustrating them or making them feel either
that they are stupid or you are incompetent or trying to confuse them.


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