If you visit the site, rather than the feed, you many have noticed I’ve been tweaking the design a little. This is the first stage of a whole site make-over but it’s going take a while. I spent about 45 minutes just mucking around with link colours! * Sounds like a trivial thing, but what UX should a link provide?
- Should a link you haven’t visited be light or dark?
- When you’ve visited should it change state and/or colour.
- Should it be underlined? That’s the old standard but does it matter these days?
Looking around I found all sorts of combinations. I thought I had it sorted until I looked at the colours on an LCD screen, vs monitor, and started again. Currently all the links are Bold & Blue, when visited they go Grey, all turn Red when you hover and are not (changed that last night) underlined. Is this readable, does it make sense?
The other debate is “Open in new tab/window” vs the same tab. I have generally have links opening in the same window as it gives the user the option to Right Click > New if they choose. Is this what you’d expect/prefer?
Pity the poor souls who have application UX’s to finesse. I’m glad I didn’t have to make a Ribbon 
* RobiNZ Blogging Tip: Have a little test blog for this sort of thing. I have one with enough content to get a feel for layout/UI changes but doesn’t require a 1200+ page re-publish every time you change something!
