Your opinions of text links vs. image links?

I am in the process of redesigning my web site, and I am struggling with one design question and was hoping to get some opinions.

Presently, I have left hand navigation through my site using images as links.
I personally like the way they look, but each time I want to change a section, I have to continually Photoshop new images, which takes some time.

I notice that most sites today have moved away from image links and use text links for navigation. Are image links considered to be passé as far as web design is concerned, or are they still viable design elements?

I figure that it might be more manageable by using CSS to update my links.

 

I use text simply because it's easier, and also of course I'm not very artistic. It may be better for SEO reasons also, although the alt and possibly title attributes for linked images may count the same.

 

I would suggest you to go for text links even if you have to compromise a bit on design as text in the links counts. I am not sure alt tags and title tags in the links would have a similar effect. Text links would also reduce the overall size of your page.

 

textt links are better, because it's text, and search engines crawl it with the keywords in the text.

Also the alt tag does the same, but i think is less efficiency

 

Use text links and make them look nice with css and maybe a background or rollover background image.

 

I've gone to text links for practically everything I do. CSS has many cool features that can make text look like image buttons, etc., if you want. But there are some situations where only images will give you the look you want. Fortunately, having SEs pick up the image links isn't a problem if you take advantage of some very cool CSS features, like "background: transparent url(/some_image.gif)..." Then put the actual text link within the respective division/tag. Crawlers and visitors without CSS will see the text links and everyone else will see the images.

There's no way around the fact that images will take more space and bandwidth, but only the designer can decide whether the trade-off is justified for a particular site.

No doubt, making all of those image links by hand can also be tedious--especially at update time--but for some layouts there are ways around that, too. On a few sites, I use ImageMagick to automatically create image links when I add a page or department--any font or combination of graphics you keep on your server--and you can't tell them from homemade.

Salsa
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Another vote for text links here

I agree with Salsa. CSS gives many options in this area and above that you can use an image replacement technique so you still use text links as seen by screen readers or spiders but images as seen by regular browsers.

If you want to have those images edited easily you could look into an swf replacement technique here:
http://shauninman.com/plete/

Still text links are the most practical and light, you should always use them if there isn't an important reason not to.

 

My $0.02 worth:

As with anything else, it depends on your application. I am in agreement that text links are preferable to image links in majority of situations, but not all. Search engines (the ones that matter) are advanced enough to know that the alt tag means the same as a text link would. Where SEO comes in to play is when you start adding things like <strong> tags. They will have a weighted effect when a text link is wrapped in them, but I'm not so sure about an image.

Page load is also very important. If they're bigger than a KB or two, and you have more than a handful on your page; You should have a good reason.

The bottom line: Unless your site is specifically targeted toward people who are artistic in nature, there's no reason for fancy buttons or aliased text. Unless the images are conducive to your overall goal and marketing, there's no need for them.

 

As everybody adviced you, i also want to advice that use text links. They are very helpful in every way for your website.

 

The trouble is that you could put up a porn pic and label it "web design". So naturally images cant be trusted as much as text from an SEs point of view.

I would guess that text links have slightly more weight than image links.

CSS is easier to edit and change/ expand the nav too.

 

Also, if you really wanted the look of a particular image, you could set that image as a backround and put the text on it.

 

Text links are better.

 

Text links.

Hundreds of CSS tutorials and a few good online CSS nav building tools will allow you to have text links that look really great.

S

 

Text links, Obviously.

 

Not much to say. I use text links. With text links you have one more nice thing. You can design ads and menu links in the same style and put it in the same area. It work well

 

Another text link user here mainly because I'm not all that artistic, I have found text links using css more than enough for my needs.

 

I prefer the use of Text Links, this is quicker loading. Of course there are some times when images are better for th job, attracting clicks or the eye is important...