A Link Pattern from
Patterns for Personal Web Sites

Recognizable Links

Visitors expect links to be in their browser's default color & style. If a link is not immediately recognizable as such, it stands a good chance of being ignored.

Therefore, avoid changing the color and style of links. Links that aren't immediately recognizable should link only to optional (or decorative) content.

Making links recognizable is particularly important for images. This [generic icon] is a link; is this [generic icon]?

A thumbnail image without a border that links to a larger version of the same image is okay if the image is decorative. An exception would be a thumbnail link to a chart in research paper. In that case, it's important to make the link explicit, because the thumbnail's purpose is to indicate the presence of the link.

The color and style of text links should rarely be altered. A text link that is hard to recognize will not be discovered.

The worst case is when the link is indistinguishable from its surrounding text. This can happen when site authors rely on the default browser behavior of underlining links. Assuming that links will appear to visitors as underlined, some authors set link colors to match surrounding text. This is a dangerous practice, as many browsers allow the user to turn off underlining of links. When link underlining is disabled and link colors match the surrounding text, there is no visual indication that text is a link.



Last updated 25 June 2002
http://www.rdrop.com/~half/Creations/Writings/Web.patterns/recognizable.links.html
All contents ©2002 Mark L. Irons