Squarespace links by default are underlined, making them difficult to see on websites and causing confusion for visitors with colour blindness.
Here is a straightforward tutorial to remove underline from hyperlinks in Squarespace websites. All it requires is adding one piece of code into the CSS editor.
Text-decoration
WebDesigners can use CSS to alter how hyperlinks appear on a webpage, such as by eliminating their underline. They can do this using text-decoration property of CSS which affects inline, block and child elements, including their children. It provides several values including underline, overline and line-through; all decorations may be cleared out using “none”. This makes removing an underline from links much simpler!
Text-decoration property can be applied to inline, block and element tags. By default it has no effect; when set to underline or overline text will become underlined and overlined accordingly. Furthermore, blink will cause flashes of text on and off.
This feature can help if you want to add a unique style for your text links, such as making them bold or having specific colors. This can help users distinguish your links from other content on the page. To avoid using the default text-decoration, add this line of code into your CSS file:
The.link-* classes are a collection of utility classes that enable you to style the appearance of links on your site. With features like hover and focus states, these utilities can help make links stand out among their counterparts on any page or screen size. In addition, other elements, like em> and span> can use this functionality too – conditionally using variant modifiers like md:underline for responsive breakpoints and dark mode or prefers-reduced-motion media queries are supported for conditional application of these utilities on various elements or pages or website components.
Text-shadow
If you’re creating an eCommerce website, removing underlines may make the links look less professional and cause user confusion. CSS offers an easy solution: Use its text-shadow property to add shadow effects to links – this feature can add extra visual interest if the text covers an image.
To utilize the text-shadow property, you need a browser compatible with it. As of now, Opera 9.5+, Chrome, Safari, Konqueror and Firefox support this property; Internet Explorer emulates it. Unlike other shadow effects, text-shadow applies from front-to-back so the first shadow added will become visible within browser.
Text-shadow property accepts a list of comma-separated values to specify how a shadow should appear. Length> values determine the distance between text and shadow; offset-x> sets horizontal offset; negative values position it to the left while positive offset-y values move it higher on screen.
An equally essential parameter is opacity. You can set its percentage relative to text for a more natural shadow effect. Furthermore, adding a value in any of CSS formats (hexadecimal RGB etc) such as shadow-color> can add color. Lastly, to achieve a smoky shadow look you could add a large blur radius value in shadow-color> attribute.
Last but not least, text-shadow can also help users with visual disabilities navigate your website more efficiently. For instance, if your link says something like “get your free blogging guide here”, using text shadow will make it stand out from the text and help readers recognize it as a link – especially beneficial if your link text includes multiple words or is lengthy.
Text-overflow
Text-overflow CSS property enables Web authors to indicate how overflowing inline text should be signaled to users. Overflowing text may be clipped, displayed as an ellipsis or set as custom string by Web authors; it’s only available if overflow:hidden; and white-space: nowrap; are enabled on element which contains the inline text. When combined with text-decoration property it can also remove underlining from links.
The clip property cuts off overflowing text at its parent element’s boundary; this is its default value. Ellipses (‘…) display this overflowing text as an ellipsis (‘…’) which may contain any character, including spaces; this option may be helpful when dealing with long strings that do not fit within their width and cause truncation of sentences in midsentence.
Use of the btn class on links is another effective way to remove underlined links, as this will override Bootstrap’s default styling for links, which underlines them by default. In addition, using this approach enables you to style links differently such as changing font color.
Use the btn-primary class to change the background color of your links and make them more visible, helping screen readers navigate your site more efficiently.
Though underlining can be useful in identifying links, it is equally essential that they stand out from the text – this helps those with colorblindness and other visual disabilities easily recognize them. Aside from adding colors or different font weights for each link, try differentiating it through font weight or an underline.
If your website contains many links, it can be challenging to distinguish them. To help them stand out, use different colors for links or make their text bold; adding dotted backgrounding will create more of an effect similar to button-likeness – add this code into your CSS file:
Hover
Hovering occurs when a user moves their mouse pointer over an interactive object. Hovering can be used to highlight or underline text or change its color; it is also an ideal feature for websites looking to make their links more noticeable to visitors.
To use hover, you need a valid URL and CSS file – either as an independent file or included as part of an HTML page’s style> tag – before setting out your rules in CSS files that apply them to your webpage, such as changing font-weight of headers using :hover pseudo-classes.
If you want to remove the underline from a link, use CSS’s text-decoration property with value “none,” which will remove all underlines in an HTML document. Alternatively, individual links can be styled separately using their class attribute.
Squarespace’s default behavior for text links is to underline them; however, this may not be suitable for certain users with visual impairments and blindness, making it hard for them to distinguish the link from surrounding text. Therefore, to make them easily identifiable and clickable it’s essential that links be clearly distinguished from their surroundings with an underline or lowlight to facilitate identification and clickability.
Simple way to achieve this is to use this snippet in your website’s custom CSS editor. It enables you to change the color of links both when static and when hovering – simply swap out hex codes with brand colors that suit your design!
Addition of the :hover pseudo-class to your stylesheet can help when styling hyperlinks, as it overrides any styles specified by other pseudo-classes such as :link or :visited. You should add this rule after those defined by other pseudo-classes but before any active rules to ensure that links are styled appropriately.
