wiki theme - external links

[Dan McGarry]

Craig Box wrote:
> 
> When you don't have http:// in your links, I think it is important (from a
> wikignome sense) to keep track of which links will leave the site, and which
> will not.  However, "J Random User", looking at the site will just see
> underlined links, which they expect to take them to "a different page" - so
> I'm not sure that we would be breaking expected behaviour.

Seconded. From a usability perspective, there are a couple of good 
reasons to differentiate between internal and external links, not the 
least of which is that most people don't look at the status bar to see 
what the actual URL is. There's also the issue of multiple Ubuntu sites, 
  and their association to this one.

That said, I too find the icons currently to be (a little) intrusive. 
Ultimately, though, anything that interferes with the flow of text is 
going to be, even differently coloured links.

> Wikipedia uses the much smaller
> http://en.wikipedia.org/skins-1.5/monobook/external.png icon - perhaps it
> could be adopted, or an Ubuntu artist could produce something similar?

I suspect you'll find that colour will be as or more important a 
determinant as size when it comes to finding something that isn't too 
intrusive.

-- 
Dan McGarry	it.psl at fsp.org.vu

IT Consultant
Community Communications Project
Vanuatu