[WEB4LIB] Web design question

[Pam Davies]

On 14 Dec 99, at 10:12, Andrew Mutch wrote:
 
> Regular readers of Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox column will be familiar with a
> recent column where Mr. Nielsen explained that bad designs can become
> defacto web standards if enough web sites adopt them.  See:
> 
> http://www.useit.com/alertbox/991114.html
> 
> One example he provided was the blue "link" color, which he argues is a
> poor color choice in terms of readability.  However, because it is
> essentially a standard, a site that uses other colors will suffer in
> usability because web users are conditioned to view blue colored text as
> hyperlinks.  

I found it very surprising that although he mentioned the color as a 
"standard" he didn't mention underlining of text as an even more 
standard "here is a link" indicator.  Some colour  changes are too 
subtle to be noticed easily, especially in a "light" type like larger 
fonts of Arial, making links very tricky to spot.  I have no problem 
with the choice of colour for links, but I prefer them underlined!

Pam

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Pam Davies, Senior Assistant Librarian, IPR Officer 
Edward Boyle Library, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK
p.m.davies at leeds.ac.uk    tel: 0113 233 5543   fax: 0113 233 5539