[rjenkinson]

Why do the ovals for Digg, email, and comments under articles on the news page highlight when your mouse enters the oval, if you have to click on the actual text inside each one for the links to work? I don't know how many times I've clicked those things thinking that the highlight was telling me that I could click anywhere inside the oval, only to have nothing happen until I clicked on the text itself. Wouldn't giving users a bigger target to click on be better?

[Andy8]

Digg?

[ghporter]

It's a "mouseover" action that happens when the mouse is where it could click on the target. This is quite old stuff, built into one of the older HTML specs I think.

[rjenkinson]

Yes, but what I'm saying is that the text is a small target to click on. Making the whole oval have the same link as the text would be much more convenient.

[Oisín]

The changing of the background image is done to the div that contains the links themselves. If the links were made to be 100 per cent the size of the containing div and the background image changing (which is done in CSS, it’s not a mouseover action) applied to the link instead of the div, then it would work.

It’s true that it’s bad usability as it stands now.

[ghporter]

Oisín is right; it's not as usable as it could be-maybe not by a long way. But I think they're trying to minimize the screen space needed for these links, thus the rather tiny text size. Changing the background at least tells you that your mouse is close to the target. Lame, yes, but that's all I have on it.

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[Oisín]

Originally Posted by ghporter 

Oisín is right; it's not as usable as it could be-maybe not by a long way. But I think they're trying to minimize the screen space needed for these links, thus the rather tiny text size. Changing the background at least tells you that your mouse is close to the target. Lame, yes, but that's all I have on it.

That still doesn’t mean it makes any sense. Nothing about the size of the links would be changing; the only change would be that the clickable area would be the area occupied by the background image (i.e., the part that visually tells you, “This is a link”), rather than only the small text part inside it.

[ghporter]

Originally Posted by Oisín 

That still doesn’t mean it makes any sense. Nothing about the size of the links would be changing; the only change would be that the clickable area would be the area occupied by the background image (i.e., the part that visually tells you, “This is a link”), rather than only the small text part inside it.

I wasn't endorsing it, just hopefully explaining it a little. I think any button should be a "button," not some "defined space with a link inside it." I agree it's lame.