Anchor pseudoclasses
There are several pseudoclasses that can be used to apply styles to various states of a link:
a:link {color: red;} a:visited {color: blue;} a:hover {color: fuchsia;} a:active {color: maroon;}
Similar to their body
attribute counterparts in the body
element, :link
applies to hypertext
links that have not been visited, :visited
applies to links to pages that have
been visited, and :active
applies
during the act of clicking. The difference is that you can do much
more than just change color with CSS. Following are popular rules for
turning off the underline under linked text.
a:link {color: red; text-decoration: none;} a:visited {color: blue; text-decoration: none;}
The :hover
selector is used
to create rollover effects in which the link changes in appearance
when the mouse pointer moves over it. The examples above turned off
underlines for links. The following rule uses :hover
to make the underline appear as a
rollover.
a:link {color: red; text-decoration: none;} a:hover {color: red; text-decoration: underline;}
Tip
According to CSS 2, :active
and :hover
may be used with
elements other than anchors, but this use is not supported in
Internet Explorer (through Version 6) or Netscape 4.
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