Differentiate external and internal links

[DieterDePaepe]

Many of the links in the slides refer to other slides, while a few refer to external pages.
As a learner, I'm more interested in external pages than internal pages (since I'll encounter those anyway, being the avid reader that I am). It would handy to easily see which links are external and which are not.

[RubenVerborgh]

That makes sense and is actually quite easy to achieve with CSS, the question is just what would be a good visual indicator. Any suggestions? The indicator might also only be applied on hover.

[DieterDePaepe]

Two ideas come to mind:

• using a dotted underline for internal links
• adding a small background image next to the link (stole this idea from Redmine)

I'd prefer if the indicator is always visible, not just when hovering.

[RubenVerborgh]

Was also thinking about the dotted underline, just wonder if it isn't too subtle.

The background image would then be too invasive, and change text flow. Images before links do remind me of good old times on the Web though 😉

[Dromin]

The indicator might also only be applied on hover.

Side note: anything that is only visible on hover will be (mostly) unusable on touch devices.