Indicating that something is a link (was Re: Alt is not a description)

On Tue, Dec 21, 2004 at 11:09:21AM -0500, david poehlman wrote:
> By all users, we are going beyond the realm of user agents, but there are 
> combinations where links may not be discernable.

The only such combinations I can think of are when the author uses CSS
to explicity remove the clues that browsers provide to users, an all
too common problem that I think is better solved by preventing the
information being removed in the first place.

Are there any other circumstances where a user agent wouldn't inform
the user that there was a link?

> I'm not saying that putting the word link in the link text is
> necessary but I do caution against allowing the information to be
> rendered without some sort of indication coded into it such as for
> instance using a | which would at least let people know that there
> is a link.

How does a pipe character tell the user that a section of text is a
link?

> You can put it in the link text or use it as a link
> separator.

Now we are getting into the realms to differentiating between one link
and the next, and that is a different problem altogether.

> One of the reasons I like things marked up as lists is that they are
> automatically rendered with specific textual information in at least
> some cases.

I don't understand, could you provide an example please?


-- 
David Dorward                                      http://dorward.me.uk