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Most browsers let you set your own colors for hyperlinks unless the webpage
itself overrides them. Even then, your preferences can be given additional
priority to override even overridden settings. The browsers also let you
turn on/off underlining.
Question: How can you get a webpage to override the underlining?
I'm documenting an API where classes and functions have underscores in the
name. They don't read very well in links when the browser underlines them. I
want to turn underlined links off for my readers (unless they override my
settings).
===================
Also, regarding the colors used for hyperlinks, here's an older site that
still helps me. (http://www.dsiegel.com/tips/)
Something to remember is that the first browsers were developed by graduate
students. They were overcoming link color limitations in Winhelp. (It is
possible but difficult to change the hyperlink colors in WinHelp from pale
green, because the change has to be made to EVERY hyperlink individually.)
These grad students probably figured that if they made it possible in the
new browser to easily change the colors and if they chose two ugly, unusable
colors, HTML authors would be more inclined to do so. I'm sure they never
expected to see blue and purple as the ever present default set-in-concrete
link unvisited/visited colors. Had they known that these defaults would be
so common, I'm sure they would have done more research -- or used the
research of others -- in user interface design.
Then we would have default link unvisited/visited colors of red/blue. (See
link above for reasoning.)
Glenn Maxey
Voyant Technologies, Inc.
Tel. +1 303.223.5164
Fax. +1 303.223.5275
glenn -dot- maxey -at- voyanttech -dot- com
> -----Original Message-----
> From: bounce-techwr-l-58477 -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
> [mailto:bounce-techwr-l-58477 -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com]On Behalf Of
> Eichelberger, Mark
> Sent: Monday, April 02, 2001 12:09 PM
> To: TECHWR-L
> Subject: RE: Identifying links without underlining them
>
> <<<What standards do others use for indicating
> links in hard copy docs in lieu of underlining?>>>
>
> All hyperlinks are in blue. Clicked hyperlinks are in purple.
> We avoid all underlying and let the use of colored text indicate
> the existence of a hyperlink. In addition, instead of using the
> phrase "click <hyperlink>" to prompt the user to click on the
> hyperlink, we incorporate the hyperlink into the sentence. An
> example would be:
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