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Date:      Wed, 12 Jan 2005 19:52:03 +0000
From:      Ceri Davies <ceri@submonkey.net>
To:        Nikolas Britton <freebsd@nbritton.org>
Cc:        freebsd-www@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Rework of the FreeBSD website [was:FreeBSD'sVisualIdentity:Outdated?]
Message-ID:  <20050112195203.GW49329@submonkey.net>
In-Reply-To: <41E55A4D.4090507@nbritton.org>
References:  <9FC79942-5DE3-11D9-BEAB-000A95C969C6@zumbrunn.com> <AC17F3AB-5EFE-11D9-BEAB-000A95C969C6@zumbrunn.com> <20050108144127.GA75006@sumuk.de> <8B30EFDE-6195-11D9-A996-000A95C969C6@zumbrunn.com> <d9175cad05010914171ee95c7e@mail.gmail.com> <20050110180345.GC49329@submonkey.net> <F7F917E2-63BA-11D9-B8D2-000A95C969C6@zumbrunn.com> <41E50DE3.5050105@nbritton.org> <20050112155215.GU49329@submonkey.net> <41E55A4D.4090507@nbritton.org>

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On Wed, Jan 12, 2005 at 11:11:41AM -0600, Nikolas Britton wrote:
> Ceri Davies wrote:
> >On Wed, Jan 12, 2005 at 05:45:39AM -0600, Nikolas Britton wrote:
> >>Chris Zumbrunn wrote:
> >>>On Jan 10, 2005, at 7:03 PM, Ceri Davies wrote:
> >>>>On Sun, Jan 09, 2005 at 04:17:01PM -0600, Eric Kjeldergaard wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>>Something we do a lot at my workplace (web development firm, mostly)
> >>>>>is to have underlines on rollovers and (on some sites unselected,
> >>>>>depending of course on user preference).  I would prefer to not see
> >>>>>the blue underlined if we could avoid it.  Of course with the modern
> >>>>>css technology, it's not an issue because any user that wants blue
> >>>>>underlined links (vision impairment, personal preference, etc) can
> >>>>>override the link colour via his/her client.
> >>>>>
> >>>>I am sure that people with vision impairment would love to mess around
> >>>>trying to edit a custom stylesheet because you don't like blue anchor=
s.
> >>>>I quite like the rest of this patch, but removing the underline from
> >>>>links is evil.
> >>>>
> >>>People with vision impairment set their browser to override the=20
> >>>stylesheet, so the web works best for them personally. This is not=20
> >>>something that is specific to a particular site. I would argue that=20
> >>>underlining links impairs the vision of everybody else ;-)
> >>>
> >>>The important thing is consistency: If it's blue it's a link, if it's=
=20
> >>>not blue it's not a link.
> >>>
> >>This link should be helpful: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20040510.html
> >
> >Thank you (I am slightly shocked that it took two days for someone to
> >agree with me).  The W3c agree: http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/#gl-color
> >
> I not trying to agree with anyone, just providing reference to what the=
=20
> experts think.  Also you have to realize the target user of this=20
> website, 90% (more like 99.999%) have at least some technical=20
> background. Therefore they know how the web works and what and where=20
> links are. As far as the blind, what good is the website if they can't=20
> use the product?, AFAIK FreeBSD has no built-in accessibility and those=
=20
> blind people that did manage to get it installed are again going to have=
=20
> a technical background and will know how to navigate the web (the only=20
> thing they need are ALT/Title tags). This leaves only color blind people=
=20
> that we need to accommodate, text based web browsers (which don't=20
> display links as underlined or real link colors, pull up the FreeBSD=20
> site in Links), and old people (I group in the low-vision users here).=20
> So the only thing I agree with from Jakob Nielsen site is that of link=20
> color, normal text as the same color as links, using hover if links are=
=20
> not underlined, and the old people stuff. I don't care if links are=20
> underlined or not.

Everything above boils down to "I don't see how this makes it hard for
people, so it's probably ok".  I don't imagine that blind users (of
which there are quite a few) could care less whether links are
underlined or not, but if having links underlined makes it easier
for one person to find them (and I count towards that, so it's already
fulfilled) for whatever reason then they should be underlined.

How about all the people who *don't* want them underlined do the thing
with the user-agent style sheets and see how keen they are on imposing
it on others then?

In short: I will not commit, and will request a backout of, any patch
that turns off underlined links on the website.  I may not stop short of
backing it out myself either, and with that said I'll try not to reply
to this thread any more, for the sake of everyone's sanity.

Ceri
--=20
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm
not sure about the former.			  -- Einstein (attrib.)

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