[patel011393]

They're blue because computer scientist Ben Schneiderman made them blue using research from 1985:

" In 1985, a group of students at the University of Maryland, mentored by computer science professor Ben Shneiderman , conducted a series of experiments to study the impact of different hyperlink colors on user experience. They were eager to determine which color would be the most effective in terms of visibility and readability.

The experiments revealed interesting findings. While red highlighting made the links more noticeable, it negatively affected users' ability to read and comprehend the surrounding text. On the other hand, blue emerged as the clear winner. It was dark enough to be visible against a white background and light enough to stand out on a black background. Most importantly, it did not interfere with users' retention of the text's context."

Mozille should really do better research before posting histories like this. It's easy to overlook the impact of academic research in tech.

Source:

Barooah, S. (2023, June 09). Why Were Hyperlinks Chosen To Be Blue? Retrieved from https://www.newspointapp.com/english/tech/why-were-hyperlink...

[seltzered_]

The Mozilla article does reference the Hyperties system Ben Schneiderman worked on, linking to https://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/hyperties/ with the following comment:

" This may be an ancestor of our blue hyperlink we know and love today, but I do not believe that this is the first instance of the blue hyperlink since this color is cyan, and not dark blue."

[DonHopkins]

She clarified that in her subsequent article. It was the result of Ben Shneiderman's and his students' controlled empirical studies, not whimsy or arbitrary "creative" design (which we suffer from so much these days).

Revisiting why hyperlinks are blue:

https://blog.mozilla.org/en/internet-culture/why-are-hyperli...

[amelius]

Simple.

Red is a warning color, also has bad contrast on white background.

Green on white has bad contrast.

Blue has best contrast on both white and black backgrounds, and stands out from black.

Clear winner.

(Virtually everybody who ever made a PowerPoint presentation figured this out)

[smj-edison]

Side note: agree with all this except

> Red is a warning color

That is definitely the case in western culture, but in places like China, red is a positive color. Always interesting to learn what are universal signifiers (like up for more) and what are culture-specific signifiers!

[thaumasiotes]

> Blue has best contrast on both white and black backgrounds, and stands out from black.

Why would it matter if it has good contrast on two different backgrounds? If you're changing the color of the background, you can also change the color of the link.

[morkalork]

There's a rant that can follow this about usability peaking in the late 90s/early 2000s. Back when companies care about usability research over aesthetics. Buttons looked like buttons yadda yadda.

[IAmBroom]

Back in the days where you didn't have to concentrate to grab a window slider, because it was wider than 3 pixels. When the slider itself had more than 1% contrast with the slider bar, and you could easily see how far down the page you were...

But also in the days where some lunatic claimed black-on-gray had more visibility than black-on-white, and every webpage suddenly became, well, like HN.

But I'm old.

[crazygringo]

> They're blue because...

There's no causal evidence in what you posted.

Sure, the experiments determined blue would be a good color.

But I don't see any evidence that the developers of Mosaic were aware of the research or used that to inform their choice.

[hinkley]

They were blue when I got there and while we discussed how blue was chosen that is the extent of my recollections of the time - that it was discussed but not the rarionale. They were inspired/informed by the range of colors available in CGA, ANSI and early VGA color palettes. You can’t use a color that doesn’t exist on low end hardware.

It would have made sense for Lynx to settle on blue for ergonomic reasons. ANSI blue is a particular shade thats approximated in hyperlink colors.

[hamonrye]

This is oddly remeniscent of the Rhine Experiments conducted in 1937, where decks of cards with symbols inscribed were presented to a series of subjects to test extra-sensory perception. What Joseph Banks Rhine found as an abstract was that a statistical deviancy exists for programmatic ideation.

[valiant55]

What did the internet look like in 1985? I was under the impression that it'd all be terminal based since the world wide web didn't exist. I'm not sure how a hyperlink would function in such an interface.

[wmf]

Check out HyperCard; it had hyperlinks before the Web.