A student asked the design question, “Why is hypertext blue?”
I was able to speculate why as a designer I might have chosen the color blue over another; like red. Red indicates alarm where blue is less intimidating yet still provides a strong contrast with surrounding black text and a white background. However, I could not answer the question in terms of any supporting specification on the W3C (World Wide Consortium) web site.
After some searching, I discovered the answer for “why is hypertext blue” from the inventor of the World Wide Web, Lee Berners. The following quote is an excerpt from his FAQ web page…
“There is no reason why one should use color, or blue, to signify links: it is just a default. I think the first WWW client (WorldWideWeb I wrote for the NeXT) used just underline to represent link, as it was a spare emphasis form which isn’t used much in real documents. Blue came in as browsers went color – I don’t remember which was the first to use blue. You can change the defaults in most browsers, and certainly in HTML documents, and of course with CSS style sheets. There are many examples of style sheets which use different colors.
My guess is that blue is the darkest color and so threatens the legibility least. I used green whenever I could in the early WWW design, for nature and because it is supposed to be relaxing. Robert Cailliau made the WWW icon in many colors but chose green as he had always seen W in his head as green.”
Well there you have it. Blue is a default. There was no design decision on the part of the W3C and the reasons for its usage might be more attributed to decisions of particular browser developers. My guess is that someone used it, it worked, and others reasoned that “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Sometimes standards come into practice more out of habit than anything else. This may be one of those instances.
Why is hypertext blue? Now we know.
Note: If any reader knows for sure, I welcome a comment indicating as such.
References
Berners, Lee (n.d.) Frequently Asked Questions. http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/FAQ.html
What matters to me is that the blue commomly used has to my old eyes a low contrast to the white screen behind it and I wish there was a way to darken it. Better yet would be to go back to the underline.
Alas, Microsoft, in its “undoubted wisdom” seems to love blue and for some links uses white on blue, which is even worse. WinXP lets me sett to a high contrast white on black, but some things excape it from time to time.
gfmueden: Most browsers allow you to modify your preferences to display a link in any color. Maybe you can change the shade of blue that is used by default.