21. May 2007 12:20
How often do you visit a website and are unsure where to click and what is clickable?
In the past all links were blue and underlined, but web designers have increasingly found that modern stylesheet functionality (CSS) now allows them to change the look and feel of links and experiment with unconventional navigation. Sometimes so much so, that users have to mine the pages for links by hovering over the page to find out what is clickable, all for the sake of design.
User Expectations
Hyperlinks need to stand out to users as links, a clickable entity that will cause a new page to be requested when clicked.
Users should not have to spend their precious time learning what style the site uses to render hyperlinks, by watching when their mouse cursor turns into a pointing-hand while scanning the site.
Web designers need to understand users expectations.
All links should be underlined at the very least. Any other use of underlined text or blue words should be avoided as these can be confused with links.
