SimpleQuiz Part IX

The latest in the SimpleQuiz series is Part IX › Smart Linking. The subject is different ways of marking up links within a sentence. As Dan says, this is a usability thing as much as a semantic markup thing.

When I write stuff for the web I try hard to get my links right. It’s also something that I struggle to make colleagues and clients think a bit more about. Unfortunately, many people are stuck in the “Click here” way of linking.

Back to Dan’s Quiz. Like most of those who have posted comments at SimpleBits, I say option B is the best choice:

The W3C’s section on HTML has been used by many designers as a reference to build better sites.

The link highlights the relevant words, is scannable and just makes sense. Even better would be to use the title attribute to describe the link target:

The W3C’s section on HTML has been used by many designers as a reference to build better sites.

Option C, “Click here”, looks very amateurish, is completely meaningless when taken out of context, tells you nothing of where it will take you and will make me doubt the credibility of any site, no matter how good the rest of it is.

Posted on October 25, 2003 in (X)HTML

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