No line under link

linking questions

[artistvrd]

Hey there, I'm pretty new to web development, and I think my site would look a lot better if I could have the link not be underlined until hovered over. I already have the colors down, but what do I add to change this?

thanks so much!

[Quadrille]

Most visitors will set up their browsers to suit them, and while your site may 'look better', it may also be confusing to people who read without tracing their words with the mouse while their lips move. ;)

Setting it up your end depends on which editor you use ...

[tedster]

One approach takes some rules for the anchor element in your external css document

a:link {
text-decoration:none;
}
a:visited {
text-decoration:none;
}
a:hover {
text-decoration:underline;
}

I think my site would look a lot better...

Just a word of caution here. The underline as an indicator for links has been the accepted convention for links since the beginning of the web. If you choose not to follow this (or any) convention, you may find that many users are not as comfortable with your site as they might be, and they may tend to view fewer pages per visit. So make sure you don't eliminate all obvious visual cues for links in a move for visual beauty. Instead replace the underscore with some other obvious cue that does not require hovering to be seen.

From architecture we know that "form follows function". If you allow aesthetic factors to overrule functional issues, then you may find that your site under-performs.

[artistvrd]

Yeah ted, I did that, I just had a lot of lins in one column so I decided to do that, it does look better.

Some draw off links I kept underlined though,
thanks for your help you guys!

I love this site!

[tbear]

Tedsters css solution is the way to go....

I work under the assumtion that if the links are obviously links, without the underline, ie, they are in a link list location(?) then you may not need the underline. I feel that if you are including links in your body content then they should normally underlined..
If, in the 'navigation' area of your site, you have a bullet list of site titles, then I would say you could rely on a wide average of visitors realising that each bullet point is a link, without needing the underline.
If, on the other hand, your links are in your main text, you might need to underline them, to add emphasis to their link status. Assuming you want visitors to find your links, of course. :)

[IlieR]

I don't know why if you try to change this.
It's perfectly fine.
I didn't saw a good reason for that.

[tedster]

I recently did a test where I restored the underlines for all links on one site -- even those in "obvious" locations. So far (2 weeks) the site is seeing more page views per unique -- nearly a 10% uptick.

[the_nerd]

tedster,

do you really need this:

a:visited {
text-decoration:none;
}

as long as you don't want the visited link to behave differently from the "untouched" ones?

Thanks for pointing out the meaning of underlining a link .... Just did it on our benchmark - and - testing site. If purple for visited links is good enough for Google, it should definitely be good enough for me, so I added that back in as well. It doesn't look nicer than before, but if it helps .... Only deviation from standard: all outgoing links have a little icon (CSS via class attribute) telling the visitor he's leaving our website.

I'll post the results next Saturday.

nerd

[Marcia]

They say not to make people think, and many people are accustomed to recognizing the underlines as text being a link.

Added:
On some sites I make the links navy instead of the traditional blue, so they look a bit better but are still underlined so they're easily recognizable as being links.

[edited by: Marcia at 4:02 am (utc) on Nov. 25, 2006]

[tedster]

do you really need this

As you noted, it depends on what behavior you want. I was assuming that the desire was not to show underlines ever, except on :hover. Plus some browsers do not show the :hover pseudoclass behavior in all situations without a :visited rule preceding the :hover rule. So I find it best to always list :visited explictly whenever I declare :hover.