<story><title>Revisiting why hyperlinks are blue</title><url>https://blog.mozilla.org/en/internet-culture/why-are-hyperlinks-blue-revisited/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>EGreg</author><text>Actually, it &lt;i&gt;was&lt;/i&gt; green.&lt;p&gt;I am always surprised whenever Mozilla posts this, that no one seems to go straight to the horse’s mouth. So I will:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.w3.org&amp;#x2F;People&amp;#x2F;Berners-Lee&amp;#x2F;FAQ.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.w3.org&amp;#x2F;People&amp;#x2F;Berners-Lee&amp;#x2F;FAQ.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Rendition of links&lt;p&gt;Q: I&amp;#x27;m a student of visual communications and asked myself why links are blue. I found some answers that might be, for example blue is a color of learning, but I&amp;#x27;m not sure what is right. Is there any reason, why links are colored blue ?&lt;p&gt;A: There is no reason why one should use color, or blue, to signify links: it is just a default. I think the first WWW client (WorldWideWeb I wrote for the NeXT) used just underline to represent link, as it was a spare emphasis form which isn&amp;#x27;t used much in real documents. Blue came in as browsers went color - I don&amp;#x27;t remember which was the first to use blue. You can change the defaults in most browsers, and certainly in HTML documents, and of course with CSS style sheets. There are many examples of style sheets which use different colors.&lt;p&gt;My guess is that blue is the darkest color and so threatens the legibility least. I used green whenever I could in the early WWW design, for nature and because it is supposed to be relaxing. Robert Cailliau made the WWW icon in many colors but chose green as he had always seen W in his head as green.&lt;p&gt;One of the nicest link renditions was Dave Raggett&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;Arena&amp;quot; browser which had a textured parchment background and embossed out the words of the link with a square apparently raised area.*&lt;/i&gt;</text></item><item><author>NoSorryCannot</author><text>I feel like the only other plausible color that could have been chosen is green, and even that seems too opinionated. Reasons being mostly associations (red, orange, yellow meaning danger or stop, and green meaning go) and legibility on white or gray backgrounds. Add to that that people seem to disproportionately pick blue as their favorite color and they especially seem to favor it as a conservative or relaxing color choice.&lt;p&gt;That is to say, I think the odds of two people independently picking blue are pretty good.</text></item><item><author>SeanLuke</author><text>This is a fun follow-on article building on another fun  article.  Unfortunately it seems that with a decent probability the entire premise of the first article is wrong.&lt;p&gt;The original article concludes that Marc Andreessen added blue hyperlinks to NCSA Mosaic in 1993, and that&amp;#x27;s where blue came from in web browsers.  This appears to have stemmed from the mistaken notion that WWW.app (Tim Berners-Lee&amp;#x27;s browser) was only monochrome.   And this follow-on article makes the same claim:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; It is also interesting to note that WWW.app, the browser he was creating at the time, did not use blue hyperlinks.&lt;p&gt;But that&amp;#x27;s not true.  It&amp;#x27;s true that WWW.app as originally created didn&amp;#x27;t have blue hyperlinks because it was written on early NeXT cubes, which were 2-bit monochrome.  But NeXTs were color as of 1990.  And it&amp;#x27;s clear that as of 1993 WWW.app had blue links, as we had dug up in &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=28318055&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=28318055&lt;/a&gt;  In 1991 Tim Berners Lee had added comments indicating support for color hyperlinks in the immediate future.  At some point between 1991 and 1993 this feature was turned on, and links were set to blue.&lt;p&gt;Since they both had or added blue by 1993, it is not clear whether Marc beat Tim to it or vice versa, but it seems to me likely that Tim was first.  This is because (1) Since they both chose blue, it seems probable that one was copying the other. NCSA Mosaic was copying WWW.app wholesale in most aspects, and not the other way around AFAIK.  And (2) Tim was influenced by earlier hypertext systems which used blue, as discussed in this article.&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately neither of these articles actually ask Tim when he added it: they just assume WWW.app ran only on monochrome machines when, long before 1993, NeXT workstations were in color.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>SeanLuke</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t think he&amp;#x27;s saying the links were green here.  At any rate, the links were clearly blue on early color WWW.app screenshots.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;WorldWideWeb#&amp;#x2F;media&amp;#x2F;File:WorldWideWeb_FSF_GNU.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;WorldWideWeb#&amp;#x2F;media&amp;#x2F;File:World...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.w3.org&amp;#x2F;History&amp;#x2F;1994&amp;#x2F;WWW&amp;#x2F;Journals&amp;#x2F;CACM&amp;#x2F;screensnap2_24c.gif&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.w3.org&amp;#x2F;History&amp;#x2F;1994&amp;#x2F;WWW&amp;#x2F;Journals&amp;#x2F;CACM&amp;#x2F;screensnap...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Revisiting why hyperlinks are blue</title><url>https://blog.mozilla.org/en/internet-culture/why-are-hyperlinks-blue-revisited/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>EGreg</author><text>Actually, it &lt;i&gt;was&lt;/i&gt; green.&lt;p&gt;I am always surprised whenever Mozilla posts this, that no one seems to go straight to the horse’s mouth. So I will:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.w3.org&amp;#x2F;People&amp;#x2F;Berners-Lee&amp;#x2F;FAQ.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.w3.org&amp;#x2F;People&amp;#x2F;Berners-Lee&amp;#x2F;FAQ.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Rendition of links&lt;p&gt;Q: I&amp;#x27;m a student of visual communications and asked myself why links are blue. I found some answers that might be, for example blue is a color of learning, but I&amp;#x27;m not sure what is right. Is there any reason, why links are colored blue ?&lt;p&gt;A: There is no reason why one should use color, or blue, to signify links: it is just a default. I think the first WWW client (WorldWideWeb I wrote for the NeXT) used just underline to represent link, as it was a spare emphasis form which isn&amp;#x27;t used much in real documents. Blue came in as browsers went color - I don&amp;#x27;t remember which was the first to use blue. You can change the defaults in most browsers, and certainly in HTML documents, and of course with CSS style sheets. There are many examples of style sheets which use different colors.&lt;p&gt;My guess is that blue is the darkest color and so threatens the legibility least. I used green whenever I could in the early WWW design, for nature and because it is supposed to be relaxing. Robert Cailliau made the WWW icon in many colors but chose green as he had always seen W in his head as green.&lt;p&gt;One of the nicest link renditions was Dave Raggett&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;Arena&amp;quot; browser which had a textured parchment background and embossed out the words of the link with a square apparently raised area.*&lt;/i&gt;</text></item><item><author>NoSorryCannot</author><text>I feel like the only other plausible color that could have been chosen is green, and even that seems too opinionated. Reasons being mostly associations (red, orange, yellow meaning danger or stop, and green meaning go) and legibility on white or gray backgrounds. Add to that that people seem to disproportionately pick blue as their favorite color and they especially seem to favor it as a conservative or relaxing color choice.&lt;p&gt;That is to say, I think the odds of two people independently picking blue are pretty good.</text></item><item><author>SeanLuke</author><text>This is a fun follow-on article building on another fun  article.  Unfortunately it seems that with a decent probability the entire premise of the first article is wrong.&lt;p&gt;The original article concludes that Marc Andreessen added blue hyperlinks to NCSA Mosaic in 1993, and that&amp;#x27;s where blue came from in web browsers.  This appears to have stemmed from the mistaken notion that WWW.app (Tim Berners-Lee&amp;#x27;s browser) was only monochrome.   And this follow-on article makes the same claim:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; It is also interesting to note that WWW.app, the browser he was creating at the time, did not use blue hyperlinks.&lt;p&gt;But that&amp;#x27;s not true.  It&amp;#x27;s true that WWW.app as originally created didn&amp;#x27;t have blue hyperlinks because it was written on early NeXT cubes, which were 2-bit monochrome.  But NeXTs were color as of 1990.  And it&amp;#x27;s clear that as of 1993 WWW.app had blue links, as we had dug up in &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=28318055&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=28318055&lt;/a&gt;  In 1991 Tim Berners Lee had added comments indicating support for color hyperlinks in the immediate future.  At some point between 1991 and 1993 this feature was turned on, and links were set to blue.&lt;p&gt;Since they both had or added blue by 1993, it is not clear whether Marc beat Tim to it or vice versa, but it seems to me likely that Tim was first.  This is because (1) Since they both chose blue, it seems probable that one was copying the other. NCSA Mosaic was copying WWW.app wholesale in most aspects, and not the other way around AFAIK.  And (2) Tim was influenced by earlier hypertext systems which used blue, as discussed in this article.&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately neither of these articles actually ask Tim when he added it: they just assume WWW.app ran only on monochrome machines when, long before 1993, NeXT workstations were in color.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kevingadd</author><text>That doesn&amp;#x27;t seem to suggest that links were green? &amp;quot;I used green whenever I could in the early WWW design&amp;quot; makes it sound like &lt;i&gt;webpages&lt;/i&gt; were green, which is why the icon ended up being green.</text></comment>