11 Link Usability Tips

"Have you seen those links which open an info box when you hover over them? Snap.com, for instance, offers such a service. I suggest not to use it; it might be fun once, but it gets very annoying very quickly for your audience."<p>Very annoying is an understatement.<p>Also, numbers 5 and 6 can conflict with each other at times. I'm not always certain which rule to favor, but maybe that's part of what makes UI design so interesting.

Gah - Tip #1 blows. Don't be all usin' non-breaking spaces to pad out your links (or anything, for that matter). Use proper styling.<p>Like, say:<p>a.directory { padding: 0px 5px 0px 5px; }<p>That way both sides of all your links have enough padding to make them easy to click on, and you don't get those ugly underlines on the sides, like "_I_".

12. Never link to a page using javascript. I really hate this one, when you want to open the link in the new tab and instead you have to open it on the same tab and then hit back to the original page. I've been forced to write Greasemonkey scripts for sites I use often...