NATHAN ASHBY-KUHLMAN > Blog Entry

When visited links look unvisited

Something’s bothered me for a while about sun-sentinel.com’s links, and today I finally figured out what it is. The site’s CSS makes “active” links look like normal links rather than visited links. Let’s say I’m on the home page and I click a link to visit a story:

Screenshot of the mouse pointer hovering over the first of two links, which is highlighted with a CSS 'hover' effect

Now, after I’ve read the story, I use the browser’s back button to return to the front page, where the story I’ve just read does not appear to have been visited:

Screenshot of the same two links. Both look like unvisited links, even though the first has been visited

Only if I click elsewhere on the page, to “deactivate” the first link, does it properly change to the color for visited links:

Screenshot of the links, with the first link now colored as a 'visited' link

This problem doesn’t seem to happen in Netscape browsers, but Internet Explorer apparently keeps links in the active state even after you leave the page and return. The Sun-Sentinel should change its style sheets so active links have the same color as visited links — or another color entirely — but not the same color as unvisited links.

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This page last modified on Sunday, March 18, 2007 at 1:20 pm