I really do not like this.
It breaks the assumption (wrong word? Intuitive guess?) that one underline == one link.
Which means that every time I look at the link I do a doubletake trying to figure out why there are 6+ links in that word.
It breaks the assumption (wrong word? Intuitive guess?) that one underline == one link.
Which means that every time I look at the link I do a doubletake trying to figure out why there are 6+ links in that word.
As HN does not support markup I'll attempt to demonstrate with underlines. Imagine that each slice seperated by underlines is a seperate link.
_Su_p_ercalifra_g_alisticex_p_ialdocious_
I have no idea why you think i_f, r_a, c_e, or almost any of the other pairs of letters in your example would have a discontinuous underline.
They are saying that currently if there is a break in the underline it is understood that the two underlined portions of the word are two different links.
Worth noting that a continuous line can hide several links. The security conscious that likes to hover links before clicking them know this well, hence I always appreciate the use of a css :hover that would also somewhat attenuate that problem. (http://jsfiddle.net/46qvv6kn/)
The following is from what I call my "unstyled" CSS -- I'll apply it to bare-bones HTML websites.
a {
color: #1e6b8c;
text-decoration: none;
transition-property: color, background-color;
transition-duration: 0.3s;
transition-timing-function: linear;
transition-delay: 0.1s;
}
a:visited {
color: #6f32ad;
}
a:hover {
text-decoration: underline;
background: #f0f0ff;
}
a:active {
background-color: #427fed;
color: #fffff6;
}[0] http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/201004/whenever_you_us...
If you'll apply those styles to a page, you'll find that:
* Links are colored. Blue colorblindness is quite rare. That's arguably a far better choice than the orange/red links I'm seeing more frequently now. For myself, I find underlines distracting.
* On hover they're underlined and the background cover shifts.
* On click, foreground and background colors are inverted.
Your point on :focus vs. :hover is probably well-taken, though those have been equivalent for my use.
I've encountered a number of sites with disappearing sub-menus (themselves an arguably broken UI element), where the rule for visibility is :hover of the/a parent element. Which means that when the pointer moves off the parent and onto the submenu, the submenu disappears. LinkedIn has been exhibiting this recently.