Visited Links never work on my Computer

This is going to sound INSANE, but I can’t remember the “Visited Link” feature working on any of my computers in the last several years?!

Back in the 90’s when I spent most of my time on places like Yahoo - before they added all of that advertising crap - all hyperlinks were blue and when you clicked on them, they changed to purple.

But I can’t recall this feature working since the mid-2000’a on the Internet when I was running Windows XP, and it doesn’t work now on my Mac now either?!

Furthermore, I tried adding the CSS to my current website to do this, and it won’t work either?!

Is this a global conspiracy?! :shifty:

Have I went mad?

What is going on??? :-/

Sincerely,

Debbie

Many people don’t bother setting :visited styles any more, but they still work just fine.

So you’ve done something wrong. Don’t forget to place them in the right order. One mnemonic I use is “LoVe, HA!”, which is a reminder to order rules like so:

a:link
a:visited
a:hover
a:active

If you don’t follow that order, the styles get messed up. E.g., if you have your :hover styles before the :visited styles in your style sheet, the browser will soil itself.

Why???

So you’ve done something wrong. Don’t forget to place them in the right order. One mnemonic I use is “LoVe, HA!”, which is a reminder to order rules like so:

a:link
a:visited
a:hover
a:active

If you don’t follow that order, the styles get messed up. E.g., if you have your :hover styles before the :visited styles in your style sheet, the browser will soil itself.

Nice imagery, Ralph?! :eek:

Lemme see what I can figure out…

Sincerely,

Debbie

Why what? Do you mean, Why don’t people bother with them? I guess because they tend to look kind of ugly. Personally, I don’t find them all that useful. (The only other thing I know of that changes color after you’ve visited it is the toilet, and I kinda wish that didn’t happen either.)

The important thing (for me) is that I can identify where the links are on a page.

Even google sets the visited links ;). I wouldn’t say people don’t bother anymore ;).

Wow! Bold opinion. (And surprising coming from you!) :eek:

Debbie

Yes, Google does it … but can you think of many other sites that do?

Having a special color on visited links in Google can be quite handy, but I’m not so sure it has as much use on other sites, which is probably one of the reasons why it is not being used so much.

All the same, if you like this feature, then use it. I’m sure it does work on your computer, DoubleDee. Do a Google search, click a link, and go back to the search page. Do you see a different color for the link you clicked on?

If it is useful for a visitor to be able to recognize links that they’ve visited, then an indicator of some type is necessary. I happen to like such indicators on most links because they can also indicate when pages have been updated and merit a new visit. That’s VERY handy.

However, many menus use images as buttons and are not normally given a special treatment to indicate “visited”. Thus, the feedback isn’t available; and may not be very desirable, anyway.

Businesses, or people seeking to accumulate “more clicks” from forgetful users might choose to not provide such feedback.

The practical/“accessible” question is: Is there value to the user to provide active-vs-visited feedback?

Nope.

I typed in “CSS” in Google, then clicked on the second entry “Cascading Style Sheets - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia”, went to that page, then hit the “Back” button and it is blue as ever… :-/

Sincerely,

Debbie

Firefox allows the user to override the colors of the active and visited links. Perhaps yours have been customized?

I’m using FireFox v21.

Where would I check for this?

Debbie

Tools (menu item) > Options > Content > Colors

See screenshot below…

I believe they are set properly…

Debbie

Hmm… I just tried testing visited links in Firefox using Google as well and it didn’t show the default visited link purple color. I did however get the default visited links color when I did a search on https://ixquick.com/, click on a search result link and then go back to the search results tab. Try Ixquick search engine instead and see if you get the default visited link color.

One more setting you might try, Deb:

Tools (menu item) > Options > Privacy > History > Remember by browsing and download history.

If FF does not remember your history, maybe it will not remember visited sites. Sounds plausable, but I’ve never turned it off so I don’t know.

Buddy, you get the golden prize for today!!! :tup:

Just tried that, and now when I go to Google, I see the missing Purple Links!!!

And that suddenly explains why literally for years, all of those Visited Links mysteriously disappeared from my life… :eek: (It is because several years ago I started playing with FireFox’s privacy settings. Wow, what a revelation!!!)

About the only thing that is still funky, in on my own website…

When I click on a lot of my Article links, they are always blue, however, that page is “under construction” and when I click on links I get errors on the following page. Also, since I am using PHP to rotate many of those links, I think that the Visited Link won’t work on those. However, for static links like “Log In” they are now going purple!!

You’re awesome RonPat!!!

I have been scratching my head about this whole issue for ages, thinking I went crazy one day and didn’t know it?!

Funny how something so simple can have such a big impact… :blush:

Sincerely,

Debbie