[WEB4LIB] Re: curious web design

[Thomas Dowling]

>
> I've seen links done this way before, but I don't like it.  You lose
those
> precious few seconds trying to
> figure out where the hyperlink is!  8-)
> If 'twas me, I'd link both the graphic & the text.

Agreed.  The fact that anyone tries to click on either should tell their
designers that both need to be links.  Someone else should tell them that
throwing a blueball.gif before a bunch of random lines is A) passe; and B)
never going to look like a real UL with blueball bullets; but C) close
enough to a real UL to make people mentally gloss over the faux bullets.

[And someone *else* should warn them about <FONT FACE="Wingdings"...]

>
> On a related note, I've noticed some programming where the hyperlink is
not
> underlined - something
> to do with the style tag, I'm assuming.  I find this confusing, but
maybe
> that shows I'm old-fashioned.
> Is non-underlined hyperlinking the wave of the future?
>

Yes, it's done with CSS, and no, you're not old fashioned (although not
everyone agrees with your taste in link presentation).  I have to plead
guilty to doing this in one of our stylesheets, but it's for a service
where almost everything on the screen is a link and IMO the pages look
unreadable with so much underlined text.  I've gotten comments, but never
a strong complaint.

If you want to experiment with it, use this property in your stylesheet:

  A:link, A:visited, A:active {text-decoration: none}

Likewise, you can suggest underlining to those, like me, who routinely
turn it off in the browser:

  A:link, A:visited, A:active {text-decoration: underline}

...and of course, this is a good point to stress this point: web authors
cannot rely on either underlining or color alone to present the link.  You
either need to control both explicitly (which is why careless link
attributes to the BODY tag can get you into trouble), or leave both of to
the browser defaults.


Thomas Dowling
OhioLINK - Ohio Library and Information Network
tdowling at ohiolink.edu