It is an interesting point, because in 2001, what is a link was usually clear and standardized: blue, underlined, often both, like on the article page. Now, just look at Hacker News, only the links in comments are underlined, and they have no special color, you have to mouse over if you want to know. And Hacker News is not in any way special in that regard.
So I would argue that "click here" is more relevant now than it once was. Same idea for buttons by the way. They used to look like, well, buttons, often with a 3D look. Now, there is often no real difference between a button and regular framed text. It means we need more context to guess which is which.
I have this fight with some developers all the time. Users are dumb, impaired, fearful animals and if you don't spell it out to them they have no idea what to do. "Click here" might be superfluous noise but that doesn't mean it's not necessary (sometimes).
Put something better. "Visit our site", "View Results", "Download File", "Next Page". Almost anything is better than "Click here". "Click here" is the result of laziness - think about what the button does for a couple minutes and you should be able to come up with better text
If your users have really never used a web browser before, and you are absolutely sure they are using a mouse on a desktop computer, and you can't imagine them ever using a mobile phone, and purposefully want to confuse them if they do, then phrase it like:
Click this hypertext link: <a href="more-info.html">More Info</a>
Put the device specific call to action outside of the link, and make the link say what it links to, not what physical action to take to follow the link.
Anyway, mobile phone touch screens don't click. Saying "click here" is like using a floppy disk as a save icon.
Obviously for the same reason you also should not say "touch here" either. Touching your desktop computer's screen doesn't work unless you have a touch screen, which is rare.
That's the point, why saying "click here" or "touch here" is always wrong.
I dare you to use a different icon than the floppy disk for save. People still use "click" terminology for tapping things on their phone and I doubt that will ever go away.
> If your users have really never used a web browser before, and you are absolutely sure they are using a mouse on a desktop computer, and you can't imagine them ever using a mobile phone
...have you ever used a mobile phone? Clicking is the only action you can take on one.
Clicking with your finger is called "snapping" and you can't snap at traditional mobile phone interfaces and expect that to work. Touching with your finger on a screen makes no sound, not a click, not a thump, not a knock. It's silent, short of haptic or audio feedback, and that's not your finger clicking, it's the phone. That is my point. That's why they call them "touch screens" not "click screens". Do you disagree, or do you touch your phone so violently with your finger that it emits a click? Maybe that is the glass breaking!
Or is your entire point that you think it's actually a good idea to put the words "click here" in links? Then explain why?
I'm not explicitly talking about just "click here". I'd say it has it's place sometimes but it's rare. But a lot of developers have issues with redundancy or explicitly spelling things out for users for things that are "obvious".
With enough experience you learn that what is obvious is less obvious than it appears.
It's not superfluous noise at all. As a user of the World Wide Web I personally find "click here" to be easy to quickly identify and understand. When I see the underlined "click here" I quickly know exactly what I need to do.
And you don't find links with the underlined name of where they lead to be "easy to quickly identify and understand"?
Are you saying that you need links to say "click here" in order to understand what to do?
Then how did you manage to navigate to this discussion and press the reply link, which did not say "click here"?
Do you not think this looks like superfluous noise at all?
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