Ok to group anchor pseudo elements?

[Pokpok]

This has probably been covered before but a search didnt turn up anything. I often use classes like this to specify different link attributes on a page;

.tx a:link { font-family.......
.tx a:visited { font-family......

and the declarations for them are usually the same, so i wondered if i could group these two together? (I dont normally care about hover or active) I know it CAN be done but seems like i remember seeing somewhere that it shouldnt. I think something about browser compatibility but cant remember. Anyone know?

[RetroNetro]

Hello

You would group them together like so:

.tx a:link, .tx a:visited { font-family.......

Though if the visited is the same as the a:link you could just leave visited undefined completly. As far as why you should not group them, I dunno other than possible accessibility issues.

Hope this helps
Johnny

[Paul O'B]

Hi,

You could of course just define the anchor and it will define all states in one go.

.tx a {background:red}

That will define all states of the anchor in one go. The only issue is if you used named anchors (for linking to specific parts of a page etc) in your code and then they all get styled as well. (However you can use id's instead of named anchors anyway.)

Paul

[sonjay]

What I usually do is set my common attributes in one declaration:

.tx a {font family: yadayada; font-weight:bold; font-size:whatever; color:#somecolor;}

And then I declare the different states in their own declaration:

.tx a:visited {color:#a differentcolor;}
.tx a:hover {color:#anothercolor;}

For me, it makes it easier to keep track of what I'm setting for all the links in that class, versus what I'm setting differently for different states.

[Pokpok]

Ok after considerable searching i found the link i was trying to remember;

http://dbaron.org/css/1999/09/links

A great article on this subject. The author says "I do not advise grouping them" which is the part i was remembering. But what he means is not to group them all. His advice (for my purposes not caring about hover or active) is to use this;

.tx :link, :visited {blah blah}

So link and visited can be grouped together but you have to be careful grouping the others. And it makes sense to lose the a because its not needed and can affect non link anchors. Although Paul's suggestion here is excellent too.

[Paul O'B]

Hi,

Yes I've seen that article before and the one from evolt. However I agree with one of the posters (in evolts article) who thinks its easier to style the anchor element and then just take care with named anchors. As i use id's instead of named anchors I have no problems.

Still the article is worth reading and If you want to complicate your code then follow the instructions therein correctly. As long as you follow the directions carefully then that article should provide a good way of styling links etc.

However I have had to fix peoples code who have got the example wrong.

See thread:

http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?t=181874

Hope thats of some interest

Paul