Recently I’ve seen a wide usage of dotted and dashed hyperlinks in a variety of Russian Web 2.0 websites. Normally such links (which have a dashed or dotted line underneath them, instead of a normal solid line) don’t lead a user to another page, but rather perform an action on the same page without reloading it.
As an example, such links can fold/unfold information blocks, or switch between sorting order of page elements.
So I’m wondering: are such links used in the same way in the bigger internet?
Also, are there any articles or books which describe standard look&feel for hyperlinks depending on the action they perform?
There was a time, way back in the day, when a few folks tried to stick with the idea that dashed underlines were for contextual help. I think that was a carry over from old Windows help files.
But, since then, no, there is no rule or standards as to what the style of underline means in a hyperlink. For better or worse, the underline, itself, isn’t even a standard anymore as lots of sites forgo them (which, IMHO, is more often than not a bad idea).
All that said, I do like the idea and the attempt and differentiating on-page interaction vs. a link that actually takes you somewhere else.