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Over the years it seems that the appearance of internal, hyperlinked xrefs (cross-references) in PDFs has changed, and Iâm wondering if thereâs any consensus as to current best practices?
Back in the day, I guess PDFs were generally printed, not viewed on-screen, and so it made no sense to color the xrefs blue. But Iâd assume that the vast majority of the time now, people read the PDFs on-screen, and so they blue is helpful to show that it is indeed a clickable link.
Indeed, the PDFs from industry leaders with giant docs teams and DITA tools are formatted with the hyperlinks shown in blue, and not only for the heading names, but the surrounding quotes, for table/figure numbers, step/substep numbers, etc.
Iâm pretty set on adopting this, but am undecided whether to also use the numeric underline?
I think the hyperlink underline is more typical in HTML/Help systems, but even in a PDF, the underline makes the link stand out that much more. As well, the corporate branding colors Iâm stuck with use blue for âaccentsâ, so blue headings, bullets, table titles, and the like. And so adding the underline helps prevent the link from getting lost.
Thoughts?
-Monique
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