WEB DESIGN GARAGE [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Choosing Link Colors

Over the years, a couple of standards have emerged as far as the colors of hyperlinks go. Table 5.1 summarizes them for you. Go out of your way to use these link colors in your Web design. Your visitors already know from experience that blue stands for an unvisited link, so, if they can fall back on this knowledge when they come to your site, you give them one less usability hurdle.

Of course, it's not always practical or desirable to use the standard hyperlink colors. Maybe you want to key the links to corporate colors, or colors associated with your business or group. Maybe blue and purple don't work in the larger context of your design. Straying from the standards is better in the long run than trying to make the standards work. If you stray, then stray consistently. Use the same colors to represent the same things, page after page after page. Your design motto should be, "Expectations fulfilled." It's the key to educating your visitors about how your site works. If they come to expect red as the color for unvisited links, then deliver red for unvisited links absolutely everywhere on your site.