4 ms·

For all their talking about early Windows versions, they missed that Windows 3 introduced a hypertext help system. It used green links. This is what it looked

by pdw 5y ago

For all their talking about early Windows versions, they missed that Windows 3 introduced a hypertext help system. It used green links. This is what it looked like: http://toastytech.com/guis/win30help.png http://toastytech.com/guis/win30help.png

pedroma 5y ago
That's a nice looking color.
DonHopkins 5y ago
I guffawed at "I do not believe that this is the first instance of the blue hyperlink since this color is cyan, and not dark blue." No Blue Scotsman! Tim Berners-Lee told Ben Shneiderman at the time that he was influenced by the design of the HyperTIES-based "Hypertext on Hypertext" project from the 1987 HyperText conference that the ACM published, which had light blue links. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28317104 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28317104 >My students conducted more than a dozen experiments (unpublished) on different ways of highlighting and selection using current screens, e.g. green screens only permitted, bold, underscore, blinking, and I think italic(???). When we had a color screen we tried different color highlighted links. While red made the links easier to spot, user comprehension and recollection of the content declined. We chose the light blue, which Tim adopted. >His systems with embedded menus (or hot spots), where a significant user interface improvement over early systems such as Gopher. But Tim told me at the time that he was influenced by our design as he saw it in the Hypertext on Hypertext project that we used Hyperties to build for the July 1988 CACM that held the articles from the July 1987 Hypertext conference at the University of North Carolina. The ACM sold 4000 copies of our Hypertext on Hypertext disks.
fsiefken 5y ago
Ah that's probably why the color green is also in the EDIT.COM hypertext arrow links in the MSDOS 5.0 Help menu in 1991.
kbelder 5y ago
Windows help functionality has been declining ever since. Those old help files were so clean and snappy, well-organized and searchable. Now, I dread accidently pressing F1 in any major windows app.

by pdw 5y ago

pedroma 5y ago

That's a nice looking color.

DonHopkins 5y ago

I guffawed at "I do not believe that this is the first instance of the blue hyperlink since this color is cyan, and not dark blue." No Blue Scotsman! Tim Berners-Lee told Ben Shneiderman at the time that he was influenced by the design of the HyperTIES-based "Hypertext on Hypertext" project from the 1987 HyperText conference that the ACM published, which had light blue links. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28317104 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28317104 >My students conducted more than a dozen experiments (unpublished) on different ways of highlighting and selection using current screens, e.g. green screens only permitted, bold, underscore, blinking, and I think italic(???). When we had a color screen we tried different color highlighted links. While red made the links easier to spot, user comprehension and recollection of the content declined. We chose the light blue, which Tim adopted. >His systems with embedded menus (or hot spots), where a significant user interface improvement over early systems such as Gopher. But Tim told me at the time that he was influenced by our design as he saw it in the Hypertext on Hypertext project that we used Hyperties to build for the July 1988 CACM that held the articles from the July 1987 Hypertext conference at the University of North Carolina. The ACM sold 4000 copies of our Hypertext on Hypertext disks.

fsiefken 5y ago

Ah that's probably why the color green is also in the EDIT.COM hypertext arrow links in the MSDOS 5.0 Help menu in 1991.

kbelder 5y ago

Windows help functionality has been declining ever since. Those old help files were so clean and snappy, well-organized and searchable. Now, I dread accidently pressing F1 in any major windows app.