Mailing List Archive: Suggestion to promote readability of hyperlinked documents.

Suggestion to promote readability of hyperlinked documents.

jizzbug at hotmail

Dec 31, 2002, 1:27 AM

Post #1 of 31 (3709 views)

Because of the nature of Wikipedia, articles tend to get rather congested
with links. All these super-bright reds and blues and gaudy underlines can
sometimes get the better of an article. I was working on [[w:LAMP]] just
now when my eyes just couldn't take anymore.

It might be nice to find some softer colors for links, visited links, and
non-existent links. And to also, via CSS, get rid of the underlines on
links within the body of an article (the underlines are kinda helpful for
the menus to left, above, and below articles, though [.but maybe for style
these underlines could be done away with, too, and instead go with bolding
the font faces]). I do like red for non-existent articles, and blue for
existent articles; they're just way too bright as it is.

Anyways, I really think something ought to be done about this, as too many
link-filled articles just look terrible, and their readability is quite
degraded. It's just too distracting on the eyes, especially when you're
tryin' to study the text.

What do others think?

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Re: Suggestion to promote readability of hyperlinked documents. [ In reply to ]

Dec 31, 2002, 3:55 AM

Post #2 of 31 (3708 views)

On mar, 2002-12-31 at 00:27, Derek Moore wrote:
> Because of the nature of Wikipedia, articles tend to get rather congested
> with links. All these super-bright reds and blues and gaudy underlines can
> sometimes get the better of an article. I was working on [[w:LAMP]] just
> now when my eyes just couldn't take anymore.
>
> It might be nice to find some softer colors for links, visited links, and
> non-existent links.

What do you think of the colors in the Cologne Blue skin?

(I really think we need to finish cleaning up Cologne Blue and make it,
or a variant of it, the standard skin. It's a darn sight nicer looking!)

> And to also, via CSS, get rid of the underlines on
> links within the body of an article

I'm *very* much against this. It's standard convention for links on the
web to be underlined; not doing so (on top of changing the standard
colors) makes them practically invisible. I've been on sites where I
literally couldn't tell what was a link and what wasn't short of putting
the cursor over every word, because some smartass webmaster decided that
links should be bold, not underlined, and the same color as regular
text, and would use the same bold for simple emphasis...

That said, I've no objection to removing the forced underline from our
style definitions and leaving it up to the browser settings.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

Re: Suggestion to promote readability of hyperlinked documents. [ In reply to ]

jwales at bomis

Dec 31, 2002, 4:59 AM

Post #3 of 31 (3701 views)

Derek Moore wrote:
> What do others think?

I'm so old-school, I wish everything were just left at the html
defaults. :-) But I defer to others on this.

--Jimbo

Re: Suggestion to promote readability of hyperlinked documents. [ In reply to ]

Dec 31, 2002, 5:39 AM

Post #4 of 31 (3701 views)

On Tue, Dec 31, 2002 at 02:55:37AM -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:
> (I really think we need to finish cleaning up Cologne Blue and make it,
> or a variant of it, the standard skin. It's a darn sight nicer looking!)

I'm for too.

> > And to also, via CSS, get rid of the underlines on
> > links within the body of an article
>
> I'm *very* much against this. It's standard convention for links on the
> web to be underlined; not doing so (on top of changing the standard
> colors) makes them practically invisible. I've been on sites where I
> literally couldn't tell what was a link and what wasn't short of putting
> the cursor over every word, because some smartass webmaster decided that
> links should be bold, not underlined, and the same color as regular
> text, and would use the same bold for simple emphasis...

While I don't think that underline is any problem in Latin script,
it will be bad for CJK.

Re: Suggestion to promote readability of hyperlinked documents. [ In reply to ]

magnus.manske at epost

Dec 31, 2002, 5:56 AM

Post #5 of 31 (3702 views)

Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

>On Tue, Dec 31, 2002 at 02:55:37AM -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:
>
>
>>(I really think we need to finish cleaning up Cologne Blue and make it,
>>or a variant of it, the standard skin. It's a darn sight nicer looking!)
>>
>>
>
>I'm for too.
>
BTW, should we have a JavaScript-improved skin? It could hold more
functions with less cluttering of the page.
If so, should it be a new one, or a variation of an existing one?

>>> And to also, via CSS, get rid of the underlines on
>>>links within the body of an article
>>>
>>>
>>I'm *very* much against this. It's standard convention for links on the
>>web to be underlined; not doing so (on top of changing the standard
>>colors) makes them practically invisible. I've been on sites where I
>>literally couldn't tell what was a link and what wasn't short of putting
>>the cursor over every word, because some smartass webmaster decided that
>>links should be bold, not underlined, and the same color as regular
>>text, and would use the same bold for simple emphasis...
>>
>>
>
>While I don't think that underline is any problem in Latin script,
>it will be bad for CJK.
>
While underlined links are useful on most web pages, IMHO they look
really ugly on wikipedia, and break the "flow of the text". I can't
really explain why; maybe because we're link-heavy on many pages (which
in itself is a Good Thing). Maybe because I feel our pages are more like
a book (in a positive way) than most web pages. Also, most of our links
are internally, which IMHO *should* be indicated somehow, so the user
will know that he won't leave the encyclopedia by following the link.

Magnus

Re: Suggestion to promote readability of hyperlinked documents. [ In reply to ]

Dec 31, 2002, 7:32 AM

Post #6 of 31 (3701 views)

On Tue, Dec 31, 2002 at 03:11:18PM +0100, Lars Aronsson wrote:
> Derek Moore wrote:
> > Because of the nature of Wikipedia, articles tend to get rather congested
> > with links. All these super-bright reds and blues and gaudy underlines can
>
> One easy solution is to allow a CSS URL as a personal setting. If it
> is not set, everything works like today. Users who are unhappy with
> the default design can design a CSS style sheet, put it on some
> webserver (maybe upload to Wikipedia) and enter its URL in the
> personal settings. Everyone can have their own, or share URLs.

Part of the skin is in CSS, other part is in .php file.
Not everything can be modified that way.

Re: Suggestion to promote readability of hyperlinked documents. [ In reply to ]

erik_moeller at gmx

Dec 31, 2002, 11:05 AM

Post #7 of 31 (3705 views)

> Because of the nature of Wikipedia, articles tend to get rather congested
> with links. All these super-bright reds and blues and gaudy underlines can
> sometimes get the better of an article. I was working on [[w:LAMP]] just
> now when my eyes just couldn't take anymore.

Are you aware of the user preference "Underline links"? I think that
making non-underlined links the default as well would be nicer; the
argument that they are no longer recognizable as links doesn't count, as
the colors are sufficiently distinct. Underlining is generally recognized
as the most distracting of all styles in typesetting, which is why it is
almost never used in print.

There is one advantage to underlining on Wikipedia: If you have two links
right next to each other:

[[December 7]] [[1981]]

These get underlined separately, whereas with no underlining you cannot
tell whether this is one link or two links without hovering.

> It might be nice to find some softer colors for links, visited links, and
> non-existent links.

It's not as bad if you turn underlining off, but I agree the colors could
be nicer. On the infoAnarchy wiki I use red on a slightly gray background
for non-existent pages:

http://www.infoanarchy.org/wiki/

(I also use underlining there, but mostly out of laziness.)

Regards,

Erik

Re: Suggestion to promote readability of hyperlinked documents. [ In reply to ]

jwales at bomis

Dec 31, 2002, 11:10 AM

Post #8 of 31 (3701 views)

Erik Moeller wrote:
> Are you aware of the user preference "Underline links"? I think that
> making non-underlined links the default as well would be nicer; the
> argument that they are no longer recognizable as links doesn't count, as
> the colors are sufficiently distinct.

I disagree. On the web, a standard blue underline that turns purple
after you visit it is simple and instantly recognizable. For many web
users, it is the ONLY thing that they can count on to be a link.

It's very important to do what people expect. The principle of least
astonishment is key.

--Jimbo

Re: Suggestion to promote readability of hyperlinked documents. [ In reply to ]

erik_moeller at gmx

Dec 31, 2002, 11:30 AM

Post #9 of 31 (3705 views)

> What do you think of the colors in the Cologne Blue skin?
> (I really think we need to finish cleaning up Cologne Blue and make it,
> or a variant of it, the standard skin. It's a darn sight nicer looking!)

I like the current menu structure of the standard skin better, especially
with regard to special pages. (Also, having a heading like "Page options"
if there are only three items seems like overkill.) Neither "New pages"
nor "Image list" nor "Statistics" seem particularly important, and for the
other special pages there no longer is the quick access drop down from the
standard skin. I also think it's a bad idea to have the search box in the
menu bar as it's too small.

Furthermore, I can see why you want underlined links - with that skin it
really is necessary because of the dark link color. That is a bad default
choice because it makes the "Underline links" user preference almost
useless.

I do think we need to agree on a standard skin for the different language
Wikipedias. Consistency is important.

Regards,

Erik

Re: Suggestion to promote readability of hyperlinked documents. [ In reply to ]

Dec 31, 2002, 11:38 AM

Post #10 of 31 (3704 views)

On Tue, Dec 31, 2002 at 07:30:00PM +0100, Erik Moeller wrote:
> I do think we need to agree on a standard skin for the different language
> Wikipedias. Consistency is important.

It's almost impossible to agree on one skin for both Latin script
and CJK Wikipedias.

And consistency isn't all that important.
Often we have different typografical traditions in different countries.

Re: Suggestion to promote readability of hyperlinked documents. [ In reply to ]

jwales at bomis

Dec 31, 2002, 11:56 AM

Post #11 of 31 (3702 views)

Erik Moeller wrote:
> Blue underlined, yes; purple is almost used nowhere these days. CNN,
> Yahoo, Amazon, eBay etc. all don't use it.

Yahoo does. (blue/purple, the old default)

Amazon doesn't. (blue/orange)

Ebay does. (blue/purpose, the old default)

CNN doesn't. (And their choice is particularly bad because visited
and unvisited look so similar. blue/weird bluish greyish purple)

But I agree: it isn't those exact colors that matter, it's that links
should instantly look like links, and visited links should instantly
look like visited links.

Re: Suggestion to promote readability of hyperlinked documents. [ In reply to ]

erik_moeller at gmx

Dec 31, 2002, 11:59 AM

Post #12 of 31 (3704 views)

> I disagree. On the web, a standard blue underline that turns purple
> after you visit it is simple and instantly recognizable.

Blue underlined, yes; purple is almost used nowhere these days. CNN,
Yahoo, Amazon, eBay etc. all don't use it. So the expecation isn't there.
Blue underlined vs. blue is not such a big difference as to be confusing,
and we *are* a very link-heavy site.

That being said, I'm not pushing the no-underline thing. As long as I can
have my user preference, I'm happy.

Regards,

Erik

Re: Suggestion to promote readability of hyperlinked documents. [ In reply to ]

erik_moeller at gmx

Dec 31, 2002, 12:02 PM

Post #13 of 31 (3701 views)

> It's almost impossible to agree on one skin for both Latin script
> and CJK Wikipedias.

The Chinese and Japanese Wikipedia use the standard skin, what's your
point? It's Esperanto that doesn't.

Regards,

Erik

Re: Suggestion to promote readability of hyperlinked documents. [ In reply to ]

erik_moeller at gmx

Dec 31, 2002, 12:12 PM

Post #14 of 31 (3699 views)

> Erik Moeller wrote:
>> Blue underlined, yes; purple is almost used nowhere these days. CNN,
>> Yahoo, Amazon, eBay etc. all don't use it.

> Yahoo does. (blue/purple, the old default)
> Ebay does. (blue/purpose, the old default)

No, they don't, that's just because you have set these colors in your
browser and Yahoo! and eBay use the default (i.e. no color specified on
the page). Which is probably the most reasonable thing to do.

Regards,

Erik

Re: Suggestion to promote readability of hyperlinked documents. [ In reply to ]

jwales at bomis

Dec 31, 2002, 12:23 PM

Post #15 of 31 (3698 views)

Erik Moeller wrote:
> No, they don't, that's just because you have set these colors in your
> browser and Yahoo! and eBay use the default (i.e. no color specified on
> the page). Which is probably the most reasonable thing to do.

But I didn't set them in my browser. I didn't do anything. They just
came that way. I don't fiddle with my settings, I just run whatever
they give me.

Most people are like that. So most people see the web the same way I
see it.

--Jimbo

Re: Suggestion to promote readability of hyperlinked documents. [ In reply to ]

jwales at bomis

Dec 31, 2002, 12:25 PM

Post #16 of 31 (3704 views)

Brion Vibber wrote:
> On mar, 2002-12-31 at 06:11, Lars Aronsson wrote:
> > One easy solution is to allow a CSS URL as a personal setting. If it
> > is not set, everything works like today. Users who are unhappy with
> > the default design can design a CSS style sheet, put it on some
> > webserver (maybe upload to Wikipedia) and enter its URL in the
> > personal settings. Everyone can have their own, or share URLs.
>
> Looked in your browser's settings lately? If it doesn't have an option
> for a user-defined style sheet override, you're using either a very old
> or a very rare one.

I don't consider this an easy solution at all. My mother has never
heard of a CSS style sheet, nor does she have any interest in fiddling
with settings of any kind.

If there's any problem that can only be solved with users setting up
CSS style sheets, we're doing something very wrong.

--Jimbo

Re: Suggestion to promote readability of hyperlinked documents. [ In reply to ]

Dec 31, 2002, 12:33 PM

Post #17 of 31 (3701 views)

On mar, 2002-12-31 at 11:02, Erik Moeller wrote:
> > It's almost impossible to agree on one skin for both Latin script
> > and CJK Wikipedias.
>
> The Chinese and Japanese Wikipedia use the standard skin, what's your
> point? It's Esperanto that doesn't.

The Chinese stylesheet is slightly tweaked to indent paragraphs. However
taw's not talking about the _present_ skin there, but the _ideal_ one.
It ought to be tweaked further to be typographically CJK-friendly.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

Re: Suggestion to promote readability of hyperlinked documents. [ In reply to ]

Dec 31, 2002, 12:35 PM

Post #18 of 31 (3700 views)

On mar, 2002-12-31 at 06:11, Lars Aronsson wrote:
> One easy solution is to allow a CSS URL as a personal setting. If it
> is not set, everything works like today. Users who are unhappy with
> the default design can design a CSS style sheet, put it on some
> webserver (maybe upload to Wikipedia) and enter its URL in the
> personal settings. Everyone can have their own, or share URLs.

Looked in your browser's settings lately? If it doesn't have an option
for a user-defined style sheet override, you're using either a very old
or a very rare one.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

Re: Suggestion to promote readability of hyperlinked documents. [ In reply to ]

erik_moeller at gmx

Dec 31, 2002, 12:50 PM

Post #19 of 31 (3705 views)

> But I didn't set them in my browser. I didn't do anything. They just
> came that way. I don't fiddle with my settings, I just run whatever
> they give me.

> Most people are like that. So most people see the web the same way I
> see it.

That, again, depends on what browser they are using and what that
browser's defaults are. Hopefully not every browser manufacturer is so
sick to use purple as the default for visited links ;-)

Regards,

Erik

Re: Suggestion to promote readability of hyperlinked documents. [ In reply to ]

erik_moeller at gmx

Dec 31, 2002, 12:53 PM

Post #20 of 31 (3710 views)

> The Chinese stylesheet is slightly tweaked to indent paragraphs. However
> taw's not talking about the _present_ skin there, but the _ideal_ one.
> It ought to be tweaked further to be typographically CJK-friendly.

Fair enough, but even if we need a new skin to do that, it should be as
close to the one used elsewhere as possible. There's no reason to have a
different set of links everywhere. The simple truth is
- many Wikipedia users are at least bilingual
- most Wikipedia users probably do not change their skin.

So from a usability perspective it's a good idea to have the Wikipedias
look and act the same. When I first visited eo.wikipedia I wasn't even
sure if this is the same software, because I hadn't seen the Cologne skin
yet.

Regards,

Erik

Re: Suggestion to promote readability of hyperlinked documents. [ In reply to ]

jwales at bomis

Dec 31, 2002, 12:54 PM

Post #21 of 31 (3702 views)

Erik Moeller wrote:
> That, again, depends on what browser they are using and what that
> browser's defaults are. Hopefully not every browser manufacturer is so
> sick to use purple as the default for visited links ;-)

To my knowledge, they are. Netscape, IE, and Mozilla have always been
this way. If I remember correctly, Opera is the same way.

The standard link is blue, the standard visited link is purple.

I'm not saying, by the way, that we should stick to this. I've never
complained too loudly about the changes that we've made already. But
I do fear, sometimes, that we forget that most people don't use the
web the way we do.

(Well, except for me. I have the technical skills to change my
browser settings, I just don't.)

--Jimbo

Re: Suggestion to promote readability of hyperlinked documents. [ In reply to ]

jwales at bomis

Dec 31, 2002, 1:04 PM

Post #22 of 31 (3700 views)

Magnus Manske wrote:
> Would it be sufficient to have links not underlined, *but* show the
> underline when passing over them with the mouse? IMHO the average user
> can be expected to fiddle with the mouse, especially if there are no
> obvious links ("what? no links? let's try this...")

Yuck. I see no reason to do this. What's the advantage?

I hate to waste even one second of the precious brain power of our
visitors going "what? no links?" Why make people do that?

I'd say that fanciness should be an option. In general, we should
appeal to the lowest common denominator. _Everyone_ should
_immediately_ know what to do on our website.

Like Yahoo. I once heard someone complaining about how ugly Yahoo's
web design is. Yeah, but they're the most popular website in the
world. Yahoo does a good job of not astonishing people.

I'm taking a very "conservative" position here, but don't get me
wrong. I have no problem with "middle of the road" web design, i.e.
I don't have a problem with Amazon's different link colors, because
it's still underlines and it's still obvious to the user what to
do, and what the different colored links are.

Re: Suggestion to promote readability of hyperlinked documents. [ In reply to ]

magnus.manske at epost

Dec 31, 2002, 1:08 PM

Post #23 of 31 (3702 views)

Would it be sufficient to have links not underlined, *but* show the
underline when passing over them with the mouse? IMHO the average user
can be expected to fiddle with the mouse, especially if there are no
obvious links ("what? no links? let's try this...")

Magnus

Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Erik Moeller wrote:
>
>
>>That, again, depends on what browser they are using and what that
>>browser's defaults are. Hopefully not every browser manufacturer is so
>>sick to use purple as the default for visited links ;-)
>>
>>
>
>To my knowledge, they are. Netscape, IE, and Mozilla have always been
>this way. If I remember correctly, Opera is the same way.
>
>The standard link is blue, the standard visited link is purple.
>
>I'm not saying, by the way, that we should stick to this. I've never
>complained too loudly about the changes that we've made already. But
>I do fear, sometimes, that we forget that most people don't use the
>web the way we do.
>
>(Well, except for me. I have the technical skills to change my
>browser settings, I just don't.)
>
>--Jimbo
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l@wikipedia.org
>http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
>

Re: Re: Suggestion to promote readability of hyperlinked documents. [ In reply to ]

Jan 1, 2003, 8:04 PM

Post #24 of 31 (3701 views)

On Thu, Jan 02, 2003 at 05:54:02PM -0800, Daniel Mayer wrote:
> On Wednesday 01 January 2003 04:00 am, wikitech-l-request@wikipedia.org wrote:
> > So from a usability perspective it's a good idea to have the Wikipedias
> > look and act the same. When I first visited eo.wikipedia I wasn't even
> > sure if this is the same software, because I hadn't seen the Cologne skin
> > yet.
>
> Why is the default skin on eo set to Cologne blue? I too have been lost while
> visiting eo to update interlanguage links. Since I don't speak Esperanto it
> took me a minute or two to figure out where the edit the page link was. This
> is not a user friendly way of doing things at all. It also really looks the
> eo.wiki is running on different software and gives the impression that it is
> somehow separate from the other wikis.

Cologne Blue is much nicer.
I think it should be default on other Wikipedias too.

Re: Re: Suggestion to promote readability of hyperlinked documents. [ In reply to ]

jizzbug at hotmail

Jan 1, 2003, 8:30 PM

Post #25 of 31 (3699 views)

>Cologne Blue is much nicer.
>I think it should be default on other Wikipedias too.

I'm runnin' XFree86 4.2 using Mozilla 1.2.1 at a resolution of 1024x768 on a
21-inch Sony Trinitron monitor. I think the font sizes in Cologne Blue
could stand to be a bit bigger, especially with regard to the menu on the
left. I have a huge freakin' monitor, and I'm only runnin' at 1024x768 (to
get DRI), so one would think the fonts shouldn't be as small as they're
seeming to be. I've attached a screenshot if anyone is interested.

The Nostalgia theme is just god awful. *grin*

I /really/ like the default theme.

Okay, I'm done now,

Derek

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