Decoration: How do they look?
Decoration summary table: non-distinguished, selective, modest, moderate, striking, selectively animated, animated

Text Menu

The outward appearance of the anchor influences the entire piece--a key to the look and feel of the overall design. We identified a range of decoration styles from non-distinguished to animated. These descriptions are not absolute: what one reader considers a modest or small amount of decoration may be moderate to another.

If the anchor is decorated, then the eye is drawn to it. If the anchor is hidden, then the ergodic nature of the anchor rewards the reader with an additional interpretation of the work.

How a reader views the entire site or work

Anchors are often the most decorated part of a piece and thus usually drive the "look and feel" of a hypertext. The default web look is a moderate decoration (white pages, blue underlined text links, purple for visited links, black text, well defined menu bar on top and/or down the left hand side). Sites that deviate from this basic template evoke a daring, artsy, innovative feel--while sites that stick to this standard automatically adopt a veil of respectability. Moreover, sites that deviate from this are asking readers to learn a new convention (whether it be menus that look like headings such as USA TODAY [65] or bold rather than underlined anchors such as A List Apart [2]).

How a reader approaches the link

The amount of work needed to manipulate an anchor indicates how much time will be required to view and interact with a piece and how important the interpretation of the anchor is to the content of the piece. Hidden anchors (non-distinguished and not in a menu) require the most time investment, as the reader must spend additional time to identify and locate the anchor. Selective anchors require reader involvement to reveal the anchor location, and thus require thought and intent to uncover and follow anchors. Decorated but stable anchors (modest, moderate, and striking) require a moderate time investment, as the reader does not spend time identifying the anchor. Selectively animated and animated again require an investment, not to find the anchor but to watch and interpret its behavior.

Range of anchor decorations

The vast majority of efferent sites use moderate links, perhaps from the plethora of web design books that advocate this structure and the growing expectation of underlined anchors. To address reader expectation, businesses are quick to jump on a standard where artists avoid boundaries. On the other hand, the aesthetic range of creative exploration uses all of these techniques and more. Literary and artistic endeavors are not limited to strict expectations, but delight in subverting these expectations at every turn.

In addition, animated anchors provide a chance to tell a story, and thus have the ability to persuade or induce emotional responses--a complex content that would be very difficult to convey in a static state. Most stand-alone popup ads tell a story (albiet a simple one) to hook their readers into watching and clicking.

Dynamic decoration

The default setting on web pages is to change the anchor color to depict if the reader has or has not visited the destination node. Jakob Nielsen promotes this his May 3 Alertbox: "Changing the color of visited links has been part of Web browsing since Mosaic arrived in 1993, so it's completely standard; almost all users understand it. . . . Currently, 74% of websites use different colors for visited and unvisited links, making this design approach a strong convention that people have come to expect." [100] .

Modest changes (from grey to lighter grey in In The Changing Room [8] or from green to lighter green in The Pines at Walden Pond [39]) promote an easier flow and do not attract attention to the amount visited or not visited. Moderate changes are often back to the non-anchoral color, (A List Apart's [2] anchors for visited nodes are identical to nonanchoral text). Penetration [30] goes a step further and highlights anchors leading to a partially read node in yet another color.

While dynamic decoration is common with embedded anchors and text menus, our sample did not find any distinctions made in graphic menus. While flash sites can also show this distinction(Garnier Fructis [20]), most of the flash sites did not. Further, sites that used non-distinguished anchors or graphic anchors did not use a dynamic distinction, either. Sites such as What We Will [66]and War Games--Catch the LandMine!! [40]) used a single anchor, and thus the distinction would not apply.


Dynamic distinction Efferent Aesthetic
Distinction made Adaptive Path [1]
A List Apart [2]

BBC [4]

FirstGov [18]

Garnier Fructis [20]
(flash)
Nevada Division of Environmental Protection [50]
Wikipedia [68]
Afterimage [7]
Ferris Wheels [33]
High Crimson [11]
In The Changing Room [8]
Penetration [30]

Same Day Test [25]

Sand Loves [38]
Six Sex Scenes [14]
The Pines at Walden Pond [39]
The Unknown [56]
~water~water~water [59]
No distinction made, but site is flash or all anchors are non-distinguished

Bankrate [3] (flash)
Cooperstown [6] (flash)
Earthtrends [12] (non distinguished)
Fuddruckers [19] (non-distinguished)
Hummer [23] (flash)
Doonesbury [64](non-distinguished text)
Idea Line [67](non-distinguished)

25 Ways to Close a Photograph [41](graphic anchors only)
_][ad][Dressed in a Skin C.ode [44](flash)
Charmin' Cleary [16] (nondistinguished)
Diagrams Series 5 [57] (jamba)
Firefly [34] (flash)
Him [9] (flash)
I'm Simply Saying [35](flash)
Lexia to Perplexia [43](flash)
Pax [46](flash)
Poems that Go Archives [54] (graphic anchors only)
Reach [28] (nondistinguished)
The Ballad of Sand and Harry Soot [61](non distinguished)
The Rainbow Factory [22] (flash)
True North [62](nondistinguished)
War Games--Catch the LandMine!! [40] (single anchor)
What We Will [66](single anchor)
No distinction made

IDEO [24]
Questacon [55]
Royal Insititute for Deaf and Blind Children [58]
Saturn [60]






Decoration summary table
Property   Bottom line Efferent: Get information Aesthetic: Explore, uncover meanings

Non-distinguished anchors:

Anchors that cannot be distinguised from the non-anchoral content around them. (Note that anchors can be nondistinguished and also selectively animated--readers scroll over a nondistinguished portion and something happens.)

Mandates an experiential, ergodic, explorational navigation scheme as the reader must poke around to determine what yields. Adaptive Path [1]
Bankrate [3]
BBC [4] (some text anchors)
Earthtrends [12]
Fuddruckers [19]
USA TODAY [65] (while different from text, headers and anchors look the same)
_][ad][Dressed in a Skin C.ode [44]
afternoon [27]
Charmin' Cleary [16]

Diagrams Series 5 [57]
Firefly [34]
I'm Simply Saying [35]

Lexia to Perplexia [43]
Marble Springs [36]
Reach [28]
Samplers [37]
The Ballad of Sand and Harry Soot [61]

True North [62]
Zenobia, Queen of Palmyria [10]

 Selective:

Anchors that can be distinguished from the nonanchorald content when the reader performs an action (often pressing down a key).

Flicks a overall hidden anchor map on and off to switch between viewing an entirety and selecting anchors for navigation (default tool in Storyspace [13]).  

Notes Toward Absolute Zero [42]
Patchwork Girl [26]
Samplers [37]

Victory Garden [48]

 Modest:

Anchors that are only subtly or slightly distinguished from the nonanchoral content (e.g., a slightly different change in color or font).

Underplays the visual significance-and distraction of the anchor for a smoother flow.

BBC [4] (some text anchors)
Garnier Fructis [20] (submenus)

Him [9]
Penetration [30] (menu only)
~water ~water ~water [59]
Anchors can be modest--only slightly emphasized--with underlines if they are close to the same color as the rest of the text. These are borderline cases between modest and moderate.     In the Changing Room [8]
The Pines at Walden Pond [39]
Reagan Library [47]

Samplers [37]

Moderate  (Standard)

Anchors that are readily distinguished from nonanchoral content: with both textual emphasis (bold, underlining, italics) and color.

Uses the reader's expectations of current web navigation. Adaptive Path [1]
Bankrate [3]
BBC [4]
brandchannel [5]
Cooperstown [6] (menu tabs)
FirstGov [18]
Hummer [23] (menus)
IDEO [24] (text)
PeopleSoft [53]
Poems That Go archive list [54] (text)
Royal Institute for Deaf and Blind Children [58]
Saturn [60]
USA TODAY [65]
Wikipedia [68]

Ferris Wheels [33]
Joe's Heartbeat in Budapest [49]

Same Day Test [25]

Sand Loves [38]
Six Sex Scenes [14]
The Jew's Daughter [45](single link)
The Unknown [56] (dense links)

Striking

Anchors that are very different from the nonanchoral content (e.g., different font, size)

Inflates the importance of anchors to become a major content focus. A List Apart [2]
Doonesbury [64]
Garnier Fructis [20] (dots on maps)
Kidbuilding [31] (menu)
Questacon [55] (feature buttons, text)
Saturn [60](squares on maps)

High Crimson [11]
I'm Simply Saying [35]
Samplers [37]
The Rainbow Factory [22]

Selectively animated

Anchors that move, change content, or make a sound or perform an animation when the reader selects (either by rolling the mouse over the anchor or with a keystroke)

Uses the anchor as a content point--either in a mouseover, roll through, or a click over.

Used to show complex, hierarchical menus in a small screen space.
Adaptive Path [1]
BBC [4] (text)
brandchannel [5] (menu)
Cooperstown [6]
(sound)
Doonesbury [64]
(submenus)
Earthtrends [12] (texts, menu explanations)
Fuddruckers [19] (menu)
Idea Line [67](selective navigation)
Nevada Division of Environmental Protection [50]
_][ad][Dressed in a Skin C.ode [44]
I'm Simply Saying [35]

Lexia to Perplexia [43]

Pax [46]
Reach [28]
Reagan Library [47]
What We Will [66]

 Animated

Anchors that continually move, independant of a reader's actions.

Distracts the reader to the point where the anchor is the most important element on the screen.

Tells a story or provides content.

Doonesbury [64](animated core menu)
Ads (new screen, and embedded, and
storytelling banner ads)
Afterimage [7] (intro)
War Games--Catch The LandMine!! [40]