Best way to style/highlight a link?

Underline is the traditional way to highlight links. I don't really like it that much.

My new site has little arrows indicating what is a link, to the left of them, for side menus. For actual content, the colour is blue. The main menu at the top just has white on dark background.

What's a good style to apply to the a:hover CSS style for when someone hovers over a link?

At the moment I am using underline but it looks a bit out of place. Changing colour is my preferred method, and as some of the links are bold I can't really use that for a hover.

So what else is there?

You could use opposite effect for hover, or you could use a similar image to suggest it being highlighted.

use transparency
use a background
use display: block; (put in width and height as well) - makes them into buttons :P

See a website that you linke and look to see how they do it. Why re-invent another wheel?

On the other hand, original is often the best. (as it says on a lot of tins these days)

When there is a well know method/symbol for something - changing it isn't always a good idea.

you could make underline appear when you hover over it as well as what ever style you want - inverting background/text colours often works without messing up colour scheme

Hi.
A site I'm working on has yellow text on a green backround. I found that changing the colour on a: hover to the same as the rest of the text looked pretty OK. I had my doubts untill I tried it
Cheers
Jon

In reply to:

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I'm working on has yellow text on a green backround

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- have you checked what a colour blind person would make of it?? link

Oh dear.
Never thought of that. I was asked to use these colours ( #ffff99 and #006633 ) as it matches the firms livery.
Thanks for the tip, I'll look into it.
Cheers
Jon

Probably thankful they couldn't see it

I sure you'll work a good way round it - but make sure you have some facts to hand, such as 10% of UK males suffer someform of colour blindness - and of course the disability discrimination act - for the customer

some resource links