After dealing with much computer chaos, I am using a desktop and an external
monitor (HP V241).

Also using Brave browser.

I have noticed that the difference in color between the new links and the
previously visited links is so small as to be nearly nonexistent.  I can barely
tell the difference, and if the sun is coming in the window, or any other
complicating factor, I have NO idea what is new and what is not.

Perhaps this is the CSS thing that was mentioned way back.
Anyone else experiencing trouble with this?

Post a reply to this message

Le 10/08/2022 à 23:11, Bald Eagle a écrit :
> After dealing with much computer chaos, I am using a desktop and an external
> monitor (HP V241).
> 
> Also using Brave browser.
> 
> I have noticed that the difference in color between the new links and the
> previously visited links is so small as to be nearly nonexistent.  I can barely
> tell the difference, and if the sun is coming in the window, or any other
> complicating factor, I have NO idea what is new and what is not.
> 
> Perhaps this is the CSS thing that was mentioned way back.
> Anyone else experiencing trouble with this?
> 

Looking at the page http://www.povray.org/


I see dull blue for explored links, full blue for not yet explored links.

#5555aa vs #0000ff, from styles-fixed.css (a:visited vs a:link)

(Investigation done with Firefox)

I agree, the difference is very small. What is the current consensus on 
html link's colors ?

Post a reply to this message

Le_Forgeron <jgr### [at] freefr> wrote:

> Looking at the page http://www.povray.org/
>
>
> I see dull blue for explored links, full blue for not yet explored links.
>
> #5555aa vs #0000ff, from styles-fixed.css (a:visited vs a:link)
>
> (Investigation done with Firefox)
>
> I agree, the difference is very small. What is the current consensus on
> html link's colors ?

Thank you for looking into this Jerome.
I think that making all of the link text bold, might give a larger area of color
for the eye to make a comparison with.

Also, or alternatively, a more desaturated blue, or just a middle gray color for
the visited link would help to enhance the contrast between the two types of
links.

Or maybe just a very dark blue vs a very light blue.

Anything would work, so long as they are easily differentiated.  I honestly
don't care if we use black and white or green and red.   ;)

Post a reply to this message

On Mon, 15 Aug 2022 13:57:48 EDT, Bald Eagle wrote:

> Le_Forgeron <jgr### [at] freefr> wrote:
> 
>> Looking at the page http://www.povray.org/
>>
>>
>> I see dull blue for explored links, full blue for not yet explored
>> links.
>>
>> #5555aa vs #0000ff, from styles-fixed.css (a:visited vs a:link)
>>
>> (Investigation done with Firefox)
>>
>> I agree, the difference is very small. What is the current consensus on
>> html link's colors ?
> 
> Thank you for looking into this Jerome.
> I think that making all of the link text bold, might give a larger area
> of color for the eye to make a comparison with.
> 
> Also, or alternatively, a more desaturated blue, or just a middle gray
> color for the visited link would help to enhance the contrast between
> the two types of links.
> 
> Or maybe just a very dark blue vs a very light blue.
> 
> Anything would work, so long as they are easily differentiated.  I
> honestly don't care if we use black and white or green and red.   ;)

It seems that for accessibility reasons, the colours in use should not be 
closely related, but should be (as Bald Eagle says) "easily 
differentiated".  Two different shades of blue for people with various 
colour-blindness could be problematic.  I don't have such an impairment, 
but the two different shades of blue are still pretty difficult to 
distinguish at a glance.



-- 
"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and 
besides, the pig likes it." - George Bernard Shaw

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Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:

> It seems that for accessibility reasons, the colours in use should not be
> closely related, but should be (as Bald Eagle says) "easily
> differentiated".  Two different shades of blue for people with various
> colour-blindness could be problematic.  I don't have such an impairment,
> but the two different shades of blue are still pretty difficult to
> distinguish at a glance.

Didn't think of a color blindness issue.   Of course, one wonders what all of
the POV-Ray renders would look like in that case.   :O
("POV-Ray undergrad ...   put down that beer and get over here, I have a project
for you...")

I think a complicating factor is that the alternating "ledger" highlighting
colors are white and blue - which enhances the contrast enough in some cases,
and washes it out in others.

I am still perplexed as to why it "suddenly" happened when switching to a new
system.   The HP V241 was usually the "nice" monitor with the rich, vibrant
colors and better contrast in comparison to the laptop monitor(s).  Now it's all
I'm using, but I don't recall ever seeing the issue when using it as a dual
display and moving the browser window over to the external monitor.   It's
puzzling.

Post a reply to this message

On Mon, 15 Aug 2022 19:14:35 EDT, Bald Eagle wrote:

> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
> 
>> It seems that for accessibility reasons, the colours in use should not
>> be closely related, but should be (as Bald Eagle says) "easily
>> differentiated".  Two different shades of blue for people with various
>> colour-blindness could be problematic.  I don't have such an
>> impairment, but the two different shades of blue are still pretty
>> difficult to distinguish at a glance.
> 
> Didn't think of a color blindness issue.   Of course, one wonders what
> all of the POV-Ray renders would look like in that case.   :O ("POV-Ray
> undergrad ...   put down that beer and get over here, I have a project
> for you...")

I've got an app on my phone that actually can show you want the colors 
look like to people with various types of colour blindness - it's called 
CVSimulator.

> I think a complicating factor is that the alternating "ledger"
> highlighting colors are white and blue - which enhances the contrast
> enough in some cases, and washes it out in others.
> 
> I am still perplexed as to why it "suddenly" happened when switching to
> a new system.   The HP V241 was usually the "nice" monitor with the
> rich, vibrant colors and better contrast in comparison to the laptop
> monitor(s).  Now it's all I'm using, but I don't recall ever seeing the
> issue when using it as a dual display and moving the browser window over
> to the external monitor.   It's puzzling.

I'd noticed it in the past, but never really thought to say anything about 
it.

-- 
"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and 
besides, the pig likes it." - George Bernard Shaw

Post a reply to this message

On 10.08.2022 23:11, Bald Eagle wrote:
> After dealing with much computer chaos, I am using a desktop and an external
> monitor (HP V241).
> 
> Also using Brave browser.
> 
> I have noticed that the difference in color between the new links and the
> previously visited links is so small as to be nearly nonexistent.  I can barely
> tell the difference, and if the sun is coming in the window, or any other
> complicating factor, I have NO idea what is new and what is not.
> 
> Perhaps this is the CSS thing that was mentioned way back.
> Anyone else experiencing trouble with this?

Go to the "Personalise" page to get the links underlined or configure 
the colors.

	Thorsten

Post a reply to this message

On Tue, 16 Aug 2022 13:15:52 +0200, Thorsten wrote:

> On 10.08.2022 23:11, Bald Eagle wrote:
>> After dealing with much computer chaos, I am using a desktop and an
>> external monitor (HP V241).
>> 
>> Also using Brave browser.
>> 
>> I have noticed that the difference in color between the new links and
>> the previously visited links is so small as to be nearly nonexistent. 
>> I can barely tell the difference, and if the sun is coming in the
>> window, or any other complicating factor, I have NO idea what is new
>> and what is not.
>> 
>> Perhaps this is the CSS thing that was mentioned way back.
>> Anyone else experiencing trouble with this?
> 
> Go to the "Personalise" page to get the links underlined or configure
> the colors.

Link colour isn't in the "Personalize" settings, just quoted text colour; 
and it's for the web forums only, not site-wide (as far as I can tell).

Jim

-- 
"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and 
besides, the pig likes it." - George Bernard Shaw

Post a reply to this message

On 11/08/2022 07:11, Bald Eagle wrote:
> After dealing with much computer chaos, I am using a desktop and an external
> monitor (HP V241).
> 
> Also using Brave browser.
> 
> I have noticed that the difference in color between the new links and the
> previously visited links is so small as to be nearly nonexistent.  I can barely
> tell the difference, and if the sun is coming in the window, or any other
> complicating factor, I have NO idea what is new and what is not.

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 
https://en.wikipedia.org/.

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

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

Post a reply to this message

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.

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