Sent by Simon Willison on 15 July 2002 05:05
At 22:50 14/07/2002 -0400, Tim Luoma wrote:
>I am getting weary of sites that have 'text-decoration: none' and the link
>color is 0.00001% of a shade lighter or darker than the regular text.
>
>On the other hand, I'm not thrilled with the way that underlining looks.
You've already mentioned the accessibility issues involved here, but this
article is well worth a look anyway:
http://diveintomark.org/archives/2002/06/25.html#day_12_using_color_safely
Some interesting techniques I've seen for differentiating links without
making them look ugly include:
* Using "font-weight: bold" (prettier than underlining)
* Using "text-decoration: none" combined with "border-bottom: 1px dotted
#ccc" - giving them a dotted line
* The already mentioned technique of changing the background colour
(which I'm not too keen on)
Personally I find the most aesthetically pleasing technique is to have a
subtle underline that is a slightly different colour from the main text -
for example, if the text is red underline links with a light pink line.
This has been used to good effect on http://www.kottke.org/
Regards,
Simon Willison
http://www.bath.ac.uk/~cs1spw/blog/
