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I like Academia's site design. It is very pretty.

I don't like the link text color. It does not stand out very well. Perhaps it is my computer so here's a snapshot Tell me if you can see the link text without having to see the image that underscores it below.

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If everyone sees roughly this shade I recommend increasing the contrast a bit. A lot actually.

Related: Not enough distinction between visited links and unvisited in the questions list

3 Answers 3

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I say, bump the contrast! I too find it slightly too subtle for my taste.

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  • Indistinct colors cause eye strain. Source: my eyes.
    – Chris Cirefice
    Dec 7, 2014 at 20:54
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By default, here are the colors of links from Academia, pulled from the CSS:

Unvisited: #5e939f Visited: #252525 Hover: #DB786A

The hover color is the red of the leaning book in the logo, which is actually quite noticeable.

Instead of increasing contrast, increasing the saturation by increasing the blue, similar to the cyan that is used in meta, should be sufficient in differentiating the links from the text. Making the text darker and keeping the link the same color, or making the link darker or brighter, will be less noticeable if they are the same relative saturation. It is relatively easier to notice differences in color and contrast than solely differences in contrast.

Also possibly problematic, mousing over a link in Academia Meta makes it turn the same color as the text.

Edit: Does this go to a web developer for Stack Exchange? Do we need to do anything special? I know on Stack Overflow, the web devs literally fix things within seconds. This isn't crucial, but because we have no feedback, there's really no way to tell whether a person who can change this (and it's not a big change AFAIK) has actually seen it <_<

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    Well, whatever the technical aspects are, I just want to be able to see it better than I can now.
    – user23776
    Nov 24, 2014 at 19:44
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    The way to get these posts noticed by the right people is to tag them with "feature-request" and "design", as had been done here. I'm told the design team has a backlog to deal with, which is why we have so many outstanding design issues. I can remind them again next week, though.
    – ff524
    Dec 5, 2014 at 20:39
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Not sure what's going on, but the cyan on my screen is much more clearly distinct from the main text than what you're showing. I think it might be something to do with your browser, perhaps?

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    Well, on meta it is much more cyan colored. The problem seems to exist only on main. i.stack.imgur.com/gcZW7.png
    – user23776
    Nov 24, 2014 at 6:34
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    In general, with any colours in web design, your mileage may vary. The actual colour displayed to the user depends on the browser, graphics card, and screen. But it does seem a significant fraction of the site's users find the displayed colour to not be distinct enough.
    – E.P.
    Dec 2, 2014 at 12:35

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