Un-underlined Links Considered Harmful

I've been thinking about this for a while, and trying to formulate a good rant, but it has become obvious even to me that it. just. ain't. gonna. happen.

So, what else to do?

Post my half-baked thoughts on the old blog, of course!

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One of the most annoying things that has swum across my browser lately is the profusion of hyperlinks that aren't underlined.

Yeah, yeah. Underlining makes your otherwise deathless prose look clunky. Your CSS is so stokin'. Or mad cool. Or whatever.

And yeah, I get it. Mousing over your hyperlinks makes them (*gasp*) change color! And you have rollover pop-ups! And some are even sponsored!

Stop it.

Underlining was an entirely accepted standard back in the days before the suits and the script kiddies took over the Internet. One could look at a paragraph and instantly see the options to jump to another page. As hard as it might be to believe, sometimes the old ways really are the good ways.

The thing that really annoys me about the doing away with underlined links is that the current buzzword in web design is "accessibility."

Do you drooling twinkies really think that it's easy to distinguish between dark blue and sorta black text? Do you really think it aids in navigation to hide your links? Especially when I'm afraid to move my cursor anywhere, lest some stupid pop-up Javascript menu start chasing me across the screen?

Just stop it.

Bring back the underlined links.