Aug 30, 2021 09:07:00

Why are hyperlinks displayed in blue?

In most cases, 'hyperlinks ' that are linked to the URL of the website and move to the linked page when clicked are displayed in blue. Elise Blanchard, who works as a web designer at Mozilla for Firefox development, explains why, looking back on history.

Why are hyperlinks blue?
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/internet-culture/deep-dives/why-are-hyperlinks-blue/

According to Blanchard, the first traces of hyperlinks appearing in blue date back to 1993. In the update log of version 0.13 of the web browser 'Mosaic ' that will be released in the same year, 'The default anchor expression has been changed. If it is an unvisited website, it is underlined in blue, if it is a visited website, it is underlined. in dark purple dot-dash line is underlined. that ' the description there is, pointed out Mr. Blanchard is that this is the trace of the displayed hyperlink for the first time of the blue. Prior to that, the characters displayed on PCs were various, such as black on a white background and green on a black background, but hyperlinks were rarely given a special color. It seems that Mr. Blanchard does not know the clear reason why it suddenly turned blue, but as a result of the investigation, Mr. Blanchard makes the following speculation.

According to Blanchard, the ancestor of Hyperlink is probably HyperTIES , which appeared in 1983. This system used on IBM 's PC was to 'embed text in text', but because the background of the screen was black, the text color was cyan.

In 1987, the software '

HyperCard ' developed for the Macintosh introduced hyperlinks as an element that connects apps and pages, but at this point hyperlinks did not yet have the concept of 'color'.

In the same year,

hyperlinks were also used in the world's first browser 'WorldWideWeb ', making it easier to distinguish, such as underlining with a solid line unlike HyperCard, but the color of the characters was black on a white background.

Hyperlinks haven't been colored since WorldWideWeb, but in 1992 Microsoft began using blue as the active color when users clicked on various folders and icons in Windows 3.1. 'This shows that blue has evolved from layout colors to interactive colors,' says Blanchard.

After that, when various colors became available on the PC screen, various colors were used in the design, and the characters could also be colored. The first hyperlink image that Blanchard found is below, which is a port of Mosaic released for Macintosh 7.1 that appeared in 1993. Mosaic was released a year after Hyperlink Blue was introduced on Windows.

After that, browsers such as Cello , Netscape , and Internet Explorer were developed one after another, but all hyperlinks were displayed in blue. 'I think both Cello and Mosaic were inspired by Windows 3.1. The Windows 3.1 interface was the first to show the selected color prominently in blue,' said Blanchard. It's an interface, paving the way for hyperlinks to appear in blue. '