[WEB4LIB] Re: specific request on HTML coding re: colour of

[Avi Rappoport]

At 9:01 AM -0800 2/23/2000, Mike Madin wrote:
>  > >From a usability point of view, links without underlines are very bad.
>>  Read more about it in :  Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design revisited
>>  http://www.useit.com/alertbox/990502.html
>
>How about blue text only via a mouseover [I know it's hard to add for
>Netscape]? For long table of contents is it better to have the jarring all
>blue-linked text or make the link color the default text color?
>
>See for example http://www.academicinfo.net/table.html or even the
>University of Washington's library catalog main page at
>http://catalog.lib.washington.edu/search .
>
>I'm responsible for the design of the Univ. of Washington's Law Library
>catalog at http://marian.law.washington.edu/ and I'd love to get rid of all
>the blue text.

Your examples are pretty reasonable, but the blue text in your third 
page is not bad either.  If it helps five people a day figure out 
that they should click there, isn't it worth the aesthetic annoyance?

I would recommend that you test this by making a non-blue version and 
running 10 or 15 volunteers through it, just to see what happens. 
Don't tell them that you're testing link colors, and do make sure you 
get people who are relatively new to the Web, rather than power 
users.  Just ask them to perform a couple of tasks that require them 
to choose from your listings, and see whether they get confused. 
Real tests beat opinions (even mine!) any day ;-)

Avi
-- 
________________________________________________________________
Avi Rappoport, Search Tools Maven: <mailto:avirr at lanminds.com>
Guide to Site Indexing and Local Search Engines: <http://www.searchtools.com>