Blue colored links look like links. I usually make the links blue, visited links purple. All links are underlined. I guess I want to try other colored links. Currently, I made a site that has maroon colored links that are underlined. Ofcourse the link color matches the site design and somewhat blends in... What is considered to be a good design for links? I know DP does not have blue links. What are the pros and cons of having blue and non-links?? Any suggestions??
Just be very careful that it remains obvious the a link is indeed a link. People know what blue underlined text is, and what a cursor change to the pointer (hand) means. You're taking a chance every time you mess with your visitors' expectations of how things work. cheers, gary
It really depends on the color scheme and design of the website. Bold, dark blue, underlined links in Times New Roman are about as old as the internet itself (well, maybe not, but since I started using it anyways ), but they are also almost instantly recognizable, so try and find a balance of recognizability and good looks. The links on DP work because they are a different color than the main text and they change color when you move your mouse over them.
I like the blue links because everyone knows they are links. Sometimes you can fool people with different color links so they do not know they are links. I like to stick with blue when i can
I have a page which is dark blue for a background and white text. I decided my in-text links should remain underlined like normal links, and then I gave them a light blue colour to make them stand out from the white text. Visited turns orange. I also have a sidebar with really obviously a list of links, and they follow the same colour pattern. So, those are two things to consider-- that all the links on your page look like links, and are consistant within the page.
I guess the question comes down to accessibility vs design. It has been mentioned that the blue underlined links are easily recognizable instantly by almost any visitor. I always change the links to match my theme but try to aim for them to be recognisable as links. Usually by changing on hover over.
Yes it depends on the area of text i think... For example if you are displaying excerpt of post then the title can be in black but blue/or whatever on hover, because it is pretty obvious to most users that the full article can be found by clicking on excerpt/excerpt title. Also navbar links obviously you style to your needs. everywhere else yes 0000ff & underline is probably best. (this typically on smaller less-noticable links like tags etc.) just my opinion
I already have the underline and link changing its look when you hover on the link. It is just the color that I have been comptemplating... I just thought about looking at the one of the authoritative sources for CSS: http://www.w3schools.com/css/pr_text_text-align.asp They have grey links for the menu and maroon for Ads. Pretty cool... Anyway, it looks like blue underlined is easily recognizable as a link...
I think it's safe to assume that even people who are new to the internet learns after a short while that any underlined text in a deviating color is probably a link (and by deviating color I mean in relation to the most dominant color on a site).
If you compress alot of your links into a navigation menu you can get really creative with the design of your links, this way your viewers can find it super easy and be able to figure it out. As for links in the content set them off with a contrasting color and make sure they are underlined if you can, people will figure it out.
I've found that its useful if you have a hover color change, and try to match the nav bar link color with your in-content link color so people have a nice visual clue. As long as it looks like obvious link text and not some text highliting that you did, it ought to be fine and people can figure it out.
I think is it OK in the Nav menu to have blue link without underline and then when you hover it creates an underline and changes color. But the links on the body of the page must include an underline along with the blue color. In the menu, it is obvious that the links are there but in the body, it is hard to determine if it is a link or not so an underline can easily distinguish it.
As long as you keep your links underlined and use different colors for new and visited links I don't see a problem using other colors than blue.