Hyperlink Guidelines

4/19/2010

A hyperlink can open an application and initiate device functionality. For example, if a hyperlink is a phone number, pressing the ENTER button initiates a call. A hyperlink is not a control. The following table lists the controls you can use to create a hyperlink and considerations for each control.

State Attributes

The following illustrations show the appearance for hyperlinks on Windows Mobile devices.

Label Attributes

Keep link text brief to conserve space.

For Windows Mobile Professional and Windows Mobile Classic, use the 11pt Tahoma regular font and sentence capitalization.

For Windows Mobile Standard, use the 11pt Segoe regular font and sentence capitalization.

Development Considerations

Hyperlinks are not a control. They are a concept, and as such have multiple ways of being created by the developer.

HTML control:

• Allows you to leverage other aspects of the HTML control, such as background images, dynamic flow of text, etc.
• There is a mid-level performance hit when using this control.
• Users will be able to select the text using the stylus.

Rich Ink control:

• This method lends itself well to supporting dynamic flow of text, or allowing the link to exist within a string of non-linked text.
• There is a steep learning curve to making this work.
• There is a minor performance hit when using this control.

Label control:

• This method does not allow the link to live within a non-linked text string and does not allow for the dynamic flow of text around the link.
• There is no performance hit when using this control.
• This is the most simple control to code. Just trap the click and perform whatever action you want.

See Also

Concepts

User Interface Control Guidelines
Capitalization and Punctuation Guidelines
List View Guidelines

Other Resources