Chris Cason <del### [at] deletethistoopovrayorg> wrote:

> This is a topic I've looked at a few times over the last year or so, and
> each time I come back unsure about whether it should change or not as
> current practice seems to be to not strongly differentiate visited from
> non-visited. Even http://www.w3.org/ has only slight visual difference
> between the two states. Same goes for http://www.mozilla.org/ and

Perhaps that's what it is like NOW, but:

1.  I feel like we're all being increasingly gaslighted, because having used the
Internet since its inception (using Lynx and Netscape's Mosaic), I remember
there being an unmistakable difference.  Like, bright blue underlined links, and
nearly red visited links.

2.  Whatever's going on NOW is ... trendy.  And who cares.   This is our little
corner of the internet, and it's *** POV-Ray ***.   Do we EVER do anything the
way everyone else does it?

3.   "Be yourself.  Be different.  Celebrate diversity.  Carve out your own
niche.  Do it your own unique way.  You do you."

 ...

"WAIT!!!   NOOooooooo!   Not THAT WAY!!!!!"

:|

> Some prominent sites (e.g. Microsoft.com, Apple.com) have *no* visual
> difference (at least for me, using FireFox).

Apple sucks.  If we want to emulate them, let's start stealing code libraries,
bump up the price of our product, start a child labor coding sweatshop, and
install suicide nets.

Microsoft sucks.  If we want to emulate them, we need to have WAaaaaaay more
updates, break things, change things, ignore user feedback, have our product
fail to function and crash the entire OS on a regular basis, be WAaaaaaaaay
larger on install, have 37 different versions and a very expensive Enterprise
version, licensing, keys, bloat, spyware, corporate greed, and end-of-life
versions where we no longer care about support or backward compatibility.

> I'm open to changing the visited link colour, but I'd prefer first to
> see examples of some sites where a full blue unvisited link (which is
> what we use) is used alongside a visibly different but not 'clashing'
> visited link colour.
>
> -- Chris

Google.
"By default, most search engines such as Google and Bing mark results you
clicked through as purple and results unvisited as blue"
https://www.softwarehow.com/change-color-visited-links/

Brave search engine.

Stack Exchange.
https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/136432/should-visited-and-unvisited-links-be-of-different-color

Nielsen Norman Group
World Leaders in Research-Based User Experience
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/change-the-color-of-visited-links/


https://usabilitygeek.com/hyperlink-usability-guidelines-usable-links/
"Visited links: Let users know which links they have clicked on by toning done

blue to purple-ish colour."

https://blog.tbhcreative.com/2019/12/user-friendly-link-state-design.html
"Visited state
The visited state indicates a link that you have previously visited in your

usability.

Google helpfully displays visited links in different styles to make it clear


Visited states help to prevent user frustration. If users can quickly tell the

at them, they can better navigate through content. This is especially useful on
websites with many links, such as a wiki site, or within a page with search
results."


https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/02/the-definitive-guide-to-styling-web-links/

Visited links are often overlooked, but they are very helpful, especially on


them again.


obvious as unvisited links."


https://marketingexperiments.com/conversion-marketing/what-color-should-you-use-for-visited-links


At first I thought it was my computer, or monitor, or some (@#$%&*!) "setting",
and then, I was just a touch concerned about:
"blue is not a panacea for accessibility problems; elderly users actually have
greater trouble perceiving blue, according to a study by Karyn Graves. She also

compared to other colours over time, and so the ability to focus on blue

accessibility will begin to have the edge."

.... not for myself, of course, but for ... you know ... some of our more senior
forum members...   :D


* * *BUT THEN * * *


I also just asked my 12-yo.
"What color are new links and visited links?"
"New are blue, visited are orange."
(Show him the POV-Ray message digest....)
(He face-palms and shakes his head.)


So let's get hip with the younger generation and get all retro and vintage with
those blue and orange/purple links.  'Cause Orange is the new (insufficiently)
Faded Blue.

BE out.

Post a reply to this message