The web was originally developed, at least in part, to provide a means by which documents can be linked together. Hyperlinking is one of the very first things you learn when you get started in web design. Yet, as with a lot of other things, a lot of people consistently get it wrong when working with links.

I'm going to cover two basic, but common hyperlinking mistakes here. The first is used to be much more common than it is today, but it still exists: not using logical text for the hyperlink. "Click here" was perhaps the first cliche of the web - a sure sign that a designer wasn't really thinking through their pages. I hesitate to go right out and call it lazy design, but ...

One of the blogs I follow every day is scottkelby.com. Scott, in case you're not familiar with him, is the President of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals. He's also the best-selling computer book author out there. More important, at least in my eyes, is that Scott is also the grand-poobah when it comes to Photoshop knowledge. If you use Photoshop at any level and want to get better, you owe it to yourself to so as I have done and add his blog to your daily read list. I have nothing but complete respect for Scott, but that said, there is one thing that I wish Scott would change: his approach to links. Take a look at the screen shot below, taken from Scott's blog today (March 6, 2009):

See what he's doing there? He's not using the words "click here", but he might as well be with that "Here's the link" at the end. What purpose does that serve?

There are several problems with the "click here" or "here's the link" approach. To begin with, it's a bit insulting to your reader, if you think about it. They know they're supposed to click; they know it's a link. So why tell them. It's kind of like giving someone directions to a store in the mall by saying, "OK, so you need to go out in the mall, turn right, and then go downstairs. Oh, and by the way. That big hole in our wall? That's the door. You need to go through it to get started."

Instead, wouldn't it make a lot more sense to just link the relevant phrase in your text to the page in question? Take the second paragraph from scottkelby.com above: instead of the useless "Here's the link" stuff, why not just link the words "check out the work of photographer Loretta Lux."

That approach is also a lot cleaner. It reads better. It's more accessible: a screen reader will often present all of the links on a page to the user separately. Often, a blind user on Scott's page would be presented with a list of links that all said "Here's the link", and have no way of knowing which one belongs to what text. Oh, and one more key element: search engines like Google do a lot of their indexing based on the text provided by links. Having a site as prominent as Kelby's link to yours would be a big boon for search engine rankings, but unfortunately for Ms. Lux, most of that boon is lost because Google is going to index the words "here's the link" with her page, not the much more important words like her name or the fact that she's a photographer.

So please, take a moment to think about your link text. I'm going to go so far as to say that there is never, ever a time when you need meaningless "click here" text. If you think you have an example where it's simply impossible to word the text differently to get rid of it, let me know in the comments. I'm willing to bet that I can come up with a rewording that will make more sense.

The second problem I want to mention here, and the one that actually inspired this post, is much newer, and unfortunately becoming much more prominent these days. Ironically, in many ways, it's an offshoot of fixing the problem above. If you are going to have words in the middle of a sentence serve as your link, please make sure that the text is obviously different! Here's the example that made me decide I needed to write this post:

There are two links in that paragraph. Can you find them? If you were to visit the actual page from which the screen shot was taken, you could of course hover over each word with your mouse, waiting for it to change into the hand and let you know there's a link. This is in fact exactly what I had to do when I visited the site: I could tell from the context that there should be a link in there somewhere, but I certainly couldn't see anything, so I had to start mousing over stuff. Seriously? In what design school, exactly, is it being taught that you should make your links into some sort of Easter egg hunt?

In the original design of HTML, links were to be blue and underlined. Blue was chosen most likely because it is the darkest color that is most obviously not black, while underlining links made sense because no real designer would use underlining for anything else. But both were there because it was understood that it's important that links stand out: that there be contrast between them and the surrounding text.

Link many designers, I'm not a huge fan of underlining links on things that are obviously navigation: look at the sidebar to the right of this article, and you'll see that the link's aren't underlined. That's because I believe that it's obvious from the context that those are links, and because in every case, the entirety of the text in question is a link.

The body of a document in a difference story, however. Assuming that you read and took to heart the whole first portion of this post, you know by now that your links should be embedded seamlessly within your text. However, they still need to stand out. So I will always underline the text of the links in the body of a page when I create it from scratch, as well as making them an obviously different color. Rob Sommers, however, pointed out (correctly) that this blog actually contradicts that, since as you can clearly see links in the body on this page are not, in fact, underlined. So the correct statement would be simpler: just make sure that the links are the page are nice and obvious. Underlining is probably best; making the text bold I think works well, too (although if you disagree - if you think that the links within the text are hard to find - please let me know in the comments.)

So there you have it. Rule #1 for linking: link meaningful text, instead of garbage like "click here" or "here's the link." And rule #2: Never make your users have to search for that link within the text.

My friend Olen reminded me that I didn't post the follow-up to the video camera problem, so here goes.

The retailer from which I bought it is R.C. Willey. I know they are based out of Salt Lake City, but I don't know how "national" they are. They are mostly a furniture store, but oddly they have a pretty good electronics department. When I took the camera back, I immediately asked for a manager. The nice woman at the front (they have a "greeter", sort of like at Walmart, but without the ridiculous blue vest). Anyway, she said that I just needed to go back to Customer Service and they could help me. All the way back, I was rehearsing in my head all of the arguments I needed to make to avoid the 15% fee. In the end, I wasted a lot of mental energy rehearsing it. As soon as I mentioned to the woman in customer service that I didn't feel that I should be required to pay the fee, she simply said, "OK. We'll waive it." That was it. So plus one point to them for that.

As a store - as a company - I think that Willey is really good. However, like any sales organization, they can occasionally hire really bad salesmen, which is unfortunately what I encountered almost immediately after leaving the customer service counter. I went back over the cameras and found another salesman. I explained the issue, and he had the gall to actually argue with me about whether or not JVC used a proprietary format. I tried to explain that I had spent several hours Saturday night dealing with it and Googling it, but he wouldn't believe it, because after all the little tag on the camera says that it records in MPEG2. That's right: he wasn't insisting that I was wrong because he knew better, but rather because of what the stupid tag on the camera said. Knowing by this point that I was dealing with a salesman who wasn't burdened by an overabundance of education, I simply pressed on, asking if it was alright if I tested a few cameras on my laptop. He said yes, but then commented that I was going to have a problem returning the camera I already bought. I explained that no, I didn't - I had explained the situation to customer service and they waived the fee. His response, and I only wish I was kidding: "Well, I guess if you sold that to them ..." Yup. He basically accused me of lying. A**hole. Needless to say, I promptly left after that remark.

I did head over to Fry's to see what they had, and actually found a helpful salesman there. (Finding a helpful salesman at Fry's is a rare occurrence indeed.) In the end, I decided to get ... nothing. I'm going to spend some time researching this further. I have some emails out to some video people I know whom I hope will be able to help recommend a good camera that will actually do what I need it to do.

My wife and I have been talking recently about buying a new camcorder. Our daughter has a school play coming up next week, so we decided it needed to be sooner rather than later. My wife finally decided that she just didn't care too much about the details of the camera, so I went out this afternoon to get one.

My first stop was Circuit City, since they're going out of business and I thought I might find a deal. They had a few HD cameras left, but in the end I decided to go to a different retailer. I chose this other store in part because I was nervous about spending that kind of money at a store that I know for a fact will be gone in a month, but also because I found what I thought was a helpful salesman at the other store.

The camera I bought was the JVC GZ-HD5. It's an HD camera with an internal hard drive for recording. I had thought I had done the necessary research before going to the store, but there was one key element I didn't look into, and that turns out to have been a huge mistake. (But in looking for solutions tonight, I know that this isn't something I would have been able to find in advance.) As all of my readers should know, I have a bit of a bias towards Adobe products. I'm getting into the whole realm of video editing in part because as an owner of the CS4 Master Collection, I have all of Adobe's video editing tools, including Premiere Pro and OnLocation. A big part of the reason why I want a camera at all is so that I can use and learn these tools.

And here's where the fun begins. It turns out that JVC is one of those damned fool idiotic companies that insist on making cameras that record in completely non-standard formats. In this case, their cameras record to a totally useless "TOD" format. And from a new round of research online, I've discovered that pretty much, only the POS software suite that comes with the camera can actually read or do anything with these files. Great. I spend $850 on a camera but can only use worthless tools to produce crappy DVDs that look as unprofessional as it's possible to look? Does that sound like a good plan to ANYONE outside of JVC's boardroom? Seriously? (Fun fact: the software tool that they provide to create DVDs has a menu item that says, and I kid you not: "Right to DVD". Yup. They can't even take the time to spell check their menus.)

In particular, no Adobe product recognizes the format. I found a tutorial online that shows how to use 3 other tools to re-encode the video so that it can be supported by Premiere at least, but that doesn't do me a damned bit of good - there's no way I'm spending several hours on each clip I need to import before I can even start editing it. And it doesn't let me use OnLocation.

You may have noted above that I didn't mention the name of the retailer. Here's why: I plan to take the camera back to the store on Monday (they aren't open Sundays) and get them to make things right. Why, you ask, do I think that they have any share of the blame here? Well, because when I was at the store, I specifically told that nice salesman that I was looking for a camera that I could use with Adobe OnLocation and Premiere. His response: "Well, if you were just a soccer mom off the street who didn't know anything about the software, I'd suggest a Sony. But since you need to use those tools, you need to go with the JVC." Yup. THEIR salesman suggested that I buy this exact camera specially because it was the best one to use with OnLocation and Premiere, when in fact it is the one brand of camera that will not work with those tools.. Like other electronics retailers, they have a 15% "restocking fee" on opened camcorders. So I'm not mentioning their name because, as I said, I hope that they will make it right. I'm going to take the camera in, ask to speak with a manager, and calmly explain the situation. I'm going to ask that he take this camera back, with no fee, and allow me to exchange it for the Sony model that will do what I need it to do.

So check back here on Monday. I will be revealing the retailer at that point. Hopefully, it'll be in the context of "this retailer is a good one, because they care about customer satisfaction and made it right"; and not "please do not shop at this store."

And either way, I would definitely recommend that if you're in the market for a camcorder, steer away from JVC. Even if you're not planning to use the Adobe products, rest assured that you will not want to use the software that comes with the camera, but that seems to be the only choice the company gives you.