I like the use of a bg highlight - this has become more popular recently. It’s only downfall is that it often gets me confused between a link and an abbr or acronym tag styling. I have to hover over it before I can tell.

Bold coupled with another colour is a good effect in my opinion. Underline is probably one stage further - becoming the easiest style to decipher as a link. The only problem with using border-bottom that’s dotted instead of the default underline is that a certain amount accessibility is lost due to the underline being harder to see.

I do like the 3d ones, but I feel they’re more at home in a menu.

The most usable links are the default blue underline ones as they’re pretty universal. But they don’t really get people drooling.

As a designer I’m torn between usability, accessibility and looking good. I’d always go for the first two, but with a little bit of a trade off for visual appeal.

Although it’s not entirely related to the subject at hand, I’ve been searching for the past twenty minutes for a contact or even an e-mail address of one of the admins of this site, to no avail! So I’ll post here.

Maybe you could comment on the ‘fad’ of giving links a background color on hover? Some examples might be http://9rules.com/whitespace/ or http://www.mezzoblue.com and http://www.flickr.com (the links on the two latter sites are almost identical, also).

Just a thought.

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I used to have the default blue links on my site, with the underline vanishing on hover, for a retro effect. With my redesign, however, I’ve chosen a lighter blue with a grey bottom border (a.k.a. Simplebits).

3D-looking links annoy me slightly, because it gives the impression that they’re supposed to be a block element, rather than something inline with text. Although, it depends on the environment, I suppose (of the rest of the webpage, that is).

Thanks for your thoughts on links.

The admin address is currently andy(at)aspiramedia(dot)com.