[temhawk]

I am very accepting of the changes happening to XHTML and in fact I wont put a page on the web until it's completely valid code.

But the exclusion of the underline tag in XHTML 1.0 Strict is just pathetic!!!! I can't believe this!!!!

Who came up with this nonsense?!?!?!

Underlining is the most basic attribute to text. Words and whatnot have been underlined for hundreds, maybe thousands of years!!!!!

There is simply no valid argument to leave <u> or any equivalent element out of a modern web language!

A few minutes ago I read an archived discussion on some site about this, and a replier wrote:

Quote

Maybe. What does underlining mean in speech, or in Braille? You might
just as well have asked how to produce red text in XHTML Strict, or how
to make some words spoken in female voice, or how to make some words have
a sweet odour in XHTML Strict.

..which frankly doesn't make much sense to me.

Because who in the world said that web pages were alternatives to speech?! That's absurd! Web pages are way more a kind of written document, like a book!

And as we all know, stuff is underlined very often in books. And not just for referring to other pages. They can be used for emphasis just as bold text is used. In fact, underlining is even more common for emphasis in texts than emboldening; it's quicker and doesn't wear out the area of the paper as emboldening sometimes do when done too strong.

So in conclusion, underlining is perfectly normal in not only books, but also web sites, which are basically books.

Aside from that, many websites don't underline their links. Coloring is often just as indicative!! Oh and spoken words can't be colorized either!!!! So let's invalidate text coloring for XHTML 1.0 Strict/CSS3 too!</sarcasm>

[Karl Buckland]

Underlining is text decoration. It doesn't necessarily add emphasis. There's already the <em> tag, which does that and makes text bold?

You may compare web pages to books, but web pages aren't books, because they have links. Links, by default, are underlined and therefore underlining additional text can be confusing, right?

And I think the point about underlining being useful in braille, or being accepted by a text reader is an important point. The web is there to present information in an electronic format. The point of XHTML is to make it so that the markup contains just content and, hopefully, not much else.

If you really want to underline text then simply wrap it in a tag and use text-decoration: underline.

[benbacardi]

Also, the point about colourising links; some people with different kinds of colour-blindness can find it incredibly difficult to tell the difference between two colours that you or any person with natural sight consider to be totally separate. Therefore, links need some other kind of definition to ensure that they can be seen - underlining is perfect for this.

[temhawk]

Sirkent, on Mar 24 2008, 07:57 PM, said:

Underlining is text decoration. It doesn't necessarily add emphasis. There's already the <em> tag, which does that and makes text bold?

Boldness or italics are also text decoration and don't necessarily add emphasis. How many times have you seen site footers or side notes or even links that use boldness/italics without trying to emphasize on that. Underline, just as its two siblings (bold, italic) doesn't necessarily emphasize, you're right, but it can; just as easily as boldness or italics don't have to apply emphasis. (And <em> makes text italic, not bold! Also notice how I'm italicizing this sentence without the intent to emphasize.)

Sirkent, on Mar 24 2008, 07:57 PM, said:

You may compare web pages to books, but web pages aren't books, because they have links. Links, by default, are underlined and therefore underlining additional text can be confusing, right?

Who actually made underlining a standard? ..a default? I think it's just a commonness, but in today's world there are many examples that work differently and don't confuse the user. In addition to this we have image-links to consider. Should they be underlined now too to "ensure" the user can tell apart which images on the site are links and which not?

Sirkent, on Mar 24 2008, 07:57 PM, said:

And I think the point about underlining being useful in braille, or being accepted by a text reader is an important point. The web is there to present information in an electronic format. The point of XHTML is to make it so that the markup contains just content and, hopefully, not much else.

As I said before, underlines are pretty much the most basic attribute to words that is not.... well, a word. It's so close to boldness and italics, it wouldn't make sense to leave it reserved for links. Instead, the web designer could easily make different types of underlines so that words underlined for emphasis look differently than words that are links. And I wouldn't worry about text readers, they should be able to figure out when a word is underlined for emphasis and when not.

Sirkent, on Mar 24 2008, 07:57 PM, said:

If you really want to underline text then simply wrap it in a tag and use text-decoration: underline.

Okay, if that's still an option I'm glad. But then why take the <u> tag out? Why? It would only make sense if <em> and <strong> were left out as well.

benbacardi, on Mar 24 2008, 08:26 PM, said:

Also, the point about colourising links; some people with different kinds of colour-blindness can find it incredibly difficult to tell the difference between two colours that you or any person with natural sight consider to be totally separate. Therefore, links need some other kind of definition to ensure that they can be seen - underlining is perfect for this.

Colors are a very crucial part of using a computer in the first place. But I wont say that those disabled persons can be ignored -- not at all. But that's why you use specific braille/embossed stylesheets (<style . . . . . . media="braille, embossed">).

[sypher]

The problem i have with it is one group are creating the standards for the rest of us to follow to the letter. So its best just to follow your own logic. Most of their rules are common sense, some of them not so.

[Karl Buckland]

temhawk, on Mar 24 2008, 08:36 PM, said:

(And <em> makes text italic, not bold! Also notice how I'm italicizing this sentence without the intent to emphasize.)

My bad! I was typing in a hurry.

temhawk, on Mar 24 2008, 08:36 PM, said:

Who actually made underlining a standard? ..a default? I think it's just a commonness, but in today's world there are many examples that work differently and don't confuse the user. In addition to this we have image-links to consider. Should they be underlined now too to "ensure" the user can tell apart which images on the site are links and which not?

Underlining links is clearly a standard rather than a common-ness. It's been around for so long it's a standard in an of itself. It's the default in every browser if you leave out a style sheet. Who made it a standard? Does it matter? It is the best way of doing things? Well surely that's all subjective? It seems to be to be as good a way as any of doing things. Maybe you could always have links in a different colour, but that still doesn't uniquely identify coloured text as a link. You can apply the same logic here to absolutely anything, but the currently accepted way of doing things is that underlined text, or differently coloured text, is a link. Both are as wrong as each other using your argument. You can do it either way and your users should be happy, but try not to confuse them?

And as for image links - well ideally it should be obvious from the content of the image that it's meant to be a link. So it should look like a button or have something 'buttony' on it.

temhawk, on Mar 24 2008, 08:36 PM, said:

As I said before, underlines are pretty much the most basic attribute to words that is not.... well, a word. It's so close to boldness and italics, it wouldn't make sense to leave it reserved for links. Instead, the web designer could easily make different types of underlines so that words underlined for emphasis look differently than words that are links.

As I've already mentioned, it's not *actually* reserved. It's not uncommon for people to use differently coloured text for links, without underlines. But then you don't have text that isn't a link being the same colour otherwise that gets confusing. And seriously now, different types of underlines?? If you can show me a compelling example then fair enough, but I can't ever see that working in a simple and effective way. At least not as simple or effective as underlining links, or changing their colour (or both), why not make them bold too?

temhawk, on Mar 24 2008, 08:36 PM, said:

Okay, if that's still an option I'm glad. But then why take the <u> tag out? Why? It would only make sense if <em> and <strong> were left out as well.

I guess (but I don't know), simply because underlining is generally used for links and the other two are not. Similiarly, you can't change the colour of text without resorting to CSS now, so I guess it makes some sense?

sypher, on Mar 24 2008, 08:42 PM, said:

The problem i have with it is one group are creating the standards for the rest of us to follow to the letter. So its best just to follow your own logic. Most of their rules are common sense, some of them not so.

The problem I see is that there is no right, proper way. It's all subjective. At some point, someone (Tim Berners-Lee) had to decide what a link should look like and decided to underline it. He could have made it bold, or italic, or a different colour, or all of them? What difference would it make? What else could you realistically do?

The way I see it, underlining is the best option. It's the most noticeable by far. You can easily pick out underlined text over text of a different colour (colour blindness, monotone screens?, black and white print out?) or italic text.

[temhawk]

Sirkent, on Mar 25 2008, 12:37 AM, said:

My bad! I was typing in a hurry.

I figured that, it's np

Sirkent, on Mar 25 2008, 12:37 AM, said:

And as for image links - well ideally it should be obvious from the content of the image that it's meant to be a link. So it should look like a button or have something 'buttony' on it.

What is "buttony"? Where are the guidelines to this? And I've seen enough of the web to tell you that images aren't always obvious links (and some images that look like buttons aren't even links), so that'd be bad web-design, just as it's suggested that underlining non-linked text is bad web-design. But nobody seems to deal with that. I guess it'd be too much work for the standard-guys to implement a way of validating images as links.

Actually, image links should have a blue border around it to really "ensure" that they can be identified as links, EVEN if they, because of a button-design, could not possibly be mistaken for it. Because a good web-designer can make a style for text-links that can clearly say "I'm a link" without using underlines. It's ridiculous that all links should be the same! I mean, websites themselves can be drastically different from one another and the link-styles should change accordingly! Aside from that, what about sites that are very dark? Maybe even dark blue? How identifiable are those blue, underlined, "good & valid" links now?!

Sirkent, on Mar 25 2008, 12:37 AM, said:

different types of underlines?? If you can show me a compelling example then fair enough, but I can't ever see that working in a simple and effective way.

With different types of underlines I meant that a solely underlined word in a paragraph would be an emphasis or something else. And a specifically colored, underlined word would be a link; or the other way around, all depending on what looks best relative to the whole site's design and color-scheme.

Sirkent, on Mar 25 2008, 12:37 AM, said:

The problem I see is that there is no right, proper way.

Exactly. So let the individual site-maker decide what is most identifiable and fitting for his/her own site. Haven't the people who came up with this idea anything better to do than restrict us from underlines? For example suing Microsoft for shipping IE as a pile of ****? I think that would make a lot of sites much more usable than the standardizing of links.

Sirkent, on Mar 25 2008, 12:37 AM, said:

The way I see it, underlining is the best option. It's the most noticeable by far. You can easily pick out underlined text over text of a different colour (colour blindness, monotone screens?, black and white print out?) or italic text.

Color blindness . . . that is actually the best argument I've read so far. However, monotone screen[color="#FFFFFF"]s?! Are you serious?! Those don't exist anymore for all I care. I mean, I can accept a certain degree of backwards-compatibility, but that's ancient!! People with those screens probably don't even have internet!

And would be the point of being able to identify links in print-outs, regardless of whether they're B&W or not? You gunna surf the web with a sheet of paper? Besides, there are print stylesheets specifically made for this. Also, it could actually be disturbing to read a printed web-page where words in the text are suddenly underlined and you sit there, trying to figure out why they emphasized (because in books or notes underlining is clearly for emphasis) that word until you remember that this was actually a web-page before...

[marcamos]

Admittedly, I haven't read the entire contents of this thread, but my personal opinion is that the <u>...</u> element is being thrown out only because of the extremely common, yet unofficial, convention that's been created on the Internet: a word that is underlined, 99.8% of the time, is a link. If an underlined word is not a link, it WILL confuse over 95% of the visitors to that page.

[temhawk]

herkalees, on Mar 25 2008, 11:03 AM, said:

Admittedly, I haven't read the entire contents of this thread, but my personal opinion is that the <u>...</u> element is being thrown out only because of the extremely common, yet unofficial, convention that's been created on the Internet: a word that is underlined, 99.8% of the time, is a link. If an underlined word is not a link, it WILL confuse over 95% of the visitors to that page.

Don't exaggerate! Even some links on this page aren't underlined! And people don't necessarily have to get confused when they visit a new site that has a different style (without underlines) of showing links. You talk like we humans (21st century humans I may add) are new to the internet and our brain is unable to adapt to different trends. Bold, colored links is common practice as well, and I've never gotten confused with that. What I'm saying is that the amount of people that would get confused is not large, and certainly not "95%". And there will always be a bunch of people that will get confused over the web/computers, but that can't be changed.

As it's already been said, links can be styled with boldness and color and whatnot in addition to an underline. Then why not just bold and colored? It doesn't make much difference, if the site makes it clear enough what a link will generally look like on their pages, the visitor will immediately adapt to this and wont get confused. And honestly, if a paragraph of text has a lot of links in it, the many underlines would just be disturbing in my opinion. Boldness & different colors (as long as they fit with the other colors) would be better. You can't generalize that "a link should look like this". It should be the designer's responsibility to both make the site usable and appealing.

Look at this site http://de.selfhtml.org/ (German) and notice how there is a tiny icon in front of just about every link, indicating that it is just that.
Yes, I know they have the links underlined as well, but truthfully, the icon would be indicative enough. The sole obviousness that this site is a documentation about something (html & css mostly) makes it also kinda obvious that those words there in the center are links. We humans aren't dumb. Admit it!

[benbacardi]

This conversation seems to have gone way past the dropping of the <u> tag... Personally, if it's still possible to underline text using the text-decoration property, then why does it even matter?

[temhawk]

benbacardi, on Mar 25 2008, 03:31 PM, said:

why does it even matter?

That's a good point! It doesn't! And that's why the <u> tag should just remain. There's no reason to take it out with CSS still able to do it.

I know, I know... XHTML should be purely content and not styling, but underlines are like so basic!

[supasnail]

underline <u> is a display tag akin to <font> and <b> - it is a purely visual device and as such, shouldn't be used in a standards compliant, semantic document. The <em> tag semantically declares the section as needing emphasis, and can be styled to whichever visual design the author deems appropriate. It really does make more sense to style an <em> tag than use <u> in my view. I think it is a progressive and sensible move to not include <u>. Of course, if you really wanted to use <u> text style element, why not code your web pages in HTML 4.01 instead?

[temhawk]

supasnail, on Mar 25 2008, 03:58 PM, said:

underline <u> is a display tag akin to <font> and <b> - it is a purely visual device and as such, shouldn't be used in a standards compliant, semantic document. The <em> tag semantically declares the section as needing emphasis, and can be styled to whichever visual design the author deems appropriate. It really does make more sense to style an <em> tag than use <u> in my view. I think it is a progressive and sensible move to not include <u>. Of course, if you really wanted to use <u> text style element, why not code your web pages in HTML 4.01 instead?

I totally don't get the difference between <em> and <u> and <b>.

[benbacardi]

<em> says EMPHASIZE THIS TEXT!!! It doesn't denote *how*, it is merely semantics. Whereas <u> and <b> say "underline" and "bold" this text - that's not semantics, that's style. Hence the CSS.

[haku]

I personally think Benbacardi and supasnail hit the nail on the head. Underlines are decorative, and as such should be part of the CSS, not the HTML.

I think herk was also right in saying that if people underline text, it looks like a link which can be confusing. It confuses me when people do that!

[temhawk]

benbacardi, on Mar 26 2008, 03:04 AM, said:

<em> says EMPHASIZE THIS TEXT!!! It doesn't denote *how*, it is merely semantics. Whereas <u> and <b> say "underline" and "bold" this text - that's not semantics, that's style. Hence the CSS.

As I once said already, text isn't always italicized for emphasis. And sorry, but I still don't get the difference. Italic text is styled text as well. In my opinion, any text that looks different from the basic font is styled.

My final opinion (in other words, I doubt my mind can be changed about this) is that if <u> is taken out, <strong> and <em> should be too. Although I would be much more satisfied with all three of them remaining at our disposal in an easy, even designer-friendly way. And if most of you find that only links should be underlined, I will do my best to make it like that and I hope other designers do so too. But on occasions text should be underlineable in the same way that it is italicizeable (with a short and clear <u> tag for example ), because it is possible to make a non-confusing, good-looking website even if this underline-rule isn't followed. It's up to the designer, not the W3C. (In this small case.)

Discussion is closed for me unless someone thinks they can convince me or make an argument that I can't counter. (The color-blindness was one.)

[benbacardi]

I'd just like to point out that <u> and <em> and <strong> fall into two different categories. <em> says emphasize, it doesn't say how, it just so happens that the default one (because there *has* to be a default one) is to make it italic. It doesn't say "this text is italic", it says "this text is emphasized". <strong> says "this text is stronger", it doesn't say "this text is bold", it just so happens that the default (as there has to be a default) is to make it bold. <u>, however, says "this text is underlined". Underlining, bold, and italic *are* style issues. Emphasizes and strength are *not* style issues. Hence you can't compare <u> to <em>. <u> is in the same camp as <b> and <i> : <em> and <strong> are different.

[marcamos]

benbacardi, on Mar 27 2008, 10:33 AM, said:

I'd just like to point out that <u> and <em> and <strong> fall into two different categories. <em> says emphasize, it doesn't say how, it just so happens that the default one (because there *has* to be a default one) is to make it italic. It doesn't say "this text is italic", it says "this text is emphasized". <strong> says "this text is stronger", it doesn't say "this text is bold", it just so happens that the default (as there has to be a default) is to make it bold. <u>, however, says "this text is underlined". Underlining, bold, and italic *are* style issues. Emphasizes and strength are *not* style issues. Hence you can't compare <u> to <em>. <u> is in the same camp as <b> and <i> : <em> and <strong> are different.

Um, that just might be the finest explanation I've ever come across.

[benbacardi]

herkalees, on Mar 27 2008, 02:37 PM, said:

Um, that just might be the finest explanation I've ever come across.

[temhawk]

benbacardi, on Mar 27 2008, 03:33 PM, said:

I'd just like to point out that <u> and <em> and <strong> fall into two different categories. <em> says emphasize, it doesn't say how, it just so happens that the default one (because there *has* to be a default one) is to make it italic. It doesn't say "this text is italic", it says "this text is emphasized". <strong> says "this text is stronger", it doesn't say "this text is bold", it just so happens that the default (as there has to be a default) is to make it bold. <u>, however, says "this text is underlined". Underlining, bold, and italic *are* style issues. Emphasizes and strength are *not* style issues. Hence you can't compare <u> to <em>. <u> is in the same camp as <b> and <i> : <em> and <strong> are different.

That actually makes sense, now I see what you meant/mean. Thanks for trying to explain it again. This argument might even have changed my mind a bit since <u> is not connected with the other two for me now either.

Edit: Believe it or not, you converted me. You really changed my mind. I wasn't expecting that at all myself

I agree with you now that the exclusion of <u> makes sense and I will have to adapt to this

This post has been edited by benbramz: 27 March 2008 - 05:35 PM