To BOLD, or not to Bold - POLL

[RJ38]

To bold, or not to bold, that is the question.

Many of the major news websites have started bolding the text links. But then the question comes into play, does it enhance or take away from the look? Is it easier to read, or hard on the eyes?

I have set up two pages, one with bold links and one without, and a poll to find out the answer,
http://www.baywideweb.com/bold-vote.html

[brandblast]

Great to see you're taking every design aspect of your site seriously, even a small thing like bolding all the links on your site can have an impact on the overall user experience.

I have voted for not bolding your links, it gives your site a cleaner look.

[eightfifteen]

If you were not making links a different color, I would say to bold. Since you are changing the color of links, then no. Going bold makes the site look much more cluttered and confusing.

[mikmik]

1 - it is easier to read.
2 - it makes identifying links easier for color impaired people
3 - IMO it looks better on your example page because I find the look 'sparse', kind of empty with normal weight, fuller looking with the bold (obviously - laughs at myself :o])

[matauri]

As this was listed as 2 separate topics, I have merged them into one as they were exactly the same.



Cindy

[RJ38]

Hi Matauri,
I had originally posted one on site review, and one on the design board. I guess either I goofed and put them both here, or the moderator on the site review board moved it over here. Thank you for combining them.

RJ

[starrwriter]

I bold everything -- text, links, headers, photo captions. Regular fonts look like chicken scratchings to my tired old eyes.