link display

[TBanks]

Hi,

I'm using the following for link display

a:link, a:visited {
		text-decoration: none;
		background-color: transparent;
		color: #cccc99;
}

a:hover, a:active {
		text-decoration: underline;
}

I want the links to display without an underline until you mouse over (hover) - at which point the link becomes underlined. The visited link should look the same as the default link. This looks great in mozilla firebird, netscape and opera - however, in IE (6 at least), once I click on the link and navigate back to the page (with the links) the link that I clicked is still underlined (until I mouse over another link). Is the browser not reading the 'a:visited' code (a bug perhaps?), or am I coding this incorrectly?

Thanks

Toni

[RichPearce]

i'm assuming that the link that you're looking at is then in its active state (being the last link/element that was used on the page), which as defined in your stylesheet, will be underlined.

i'd take a:active out of the underlined style, and put it in with the link and visited style above it.

[TBanks]

i'm assuming that the link that you're looking at is then in its active state (being the last link/element that was used on the page), which as defined in your stylesheet, will be underlined.

that would make sense - but then I don't understand why the other browsers display it without the underline?

[N9ne]

Basically, IE does this because when you click the link, it's activated, and when you go back, you've just 'gone back' to the last action, which is, therefore clicking the link so it's as if the link is still being clicked.

[TBanks]

thanks!

[TBanks]

FYI for those interested - I've just read in Jeffrey Zeldman's "Designing With Web Standards" (GREAT book by the way!) on p242

Note that even in its latest, greatest incarnation (at least as of this writing) Internet Explorer for Windows has trouble with the hover and active pseudo-classes. Hover states tend to get stuck. Use your Back button in IE/Windows, and you will very likely find that the last link you moused over is still in its hover state. For that matter, you will very likely find that the link you clicked to move forward is still in its active state.

hmmm...

his solution

If your audience includes IE/Windows users (and whose audience does not?) you might decide to avoid a:active altogether. Or you might choose, as we have, not to do anything especially creative or challenging with it.

and a humorous final note

Whether this feezing of link states is a bug or a useful feature depends on whom you ask. Two hundred million IE/Windows users are probably accustomed to it by now, and many might believe the web is supposed to work this way.

T