Default link color

[Finnegan O'Connor]

More of a suggestion than a bug.

As most people with any CSS knowledge will know, links can be styled. A site can define the color for a regular link, when it's hovered, and also when it has been visisted (when the link has been clicked at one point or another).

For a clicked link (visited link) however, the color is black. This has the unfortunate side-effect that on darker boxcodes or character sheets (such as mine), the black text is hard, if not impossible to read and there is no way with the current BBCode available to fix this.

This is because a visited link's color is defined like so:

Code: Select all

a:visited {
  color: black;
}

It's not possible to write any valid BBCode that targets a:visted. This, for example, doesn't work (and can't work):

Code: Select all

[style=a:visited:color:black;][/style]

My request is simply that the default color for visited links is altered to a color that works regardless of dark or white backgrounds, and the simplest solution would be to use a hue of blue that is close to the one of an unclicked link. In truth, I'd actually personally prefer it the most if the visited link color was exactly the same as the default link color, because I honestly don't care at all to see a change of color when a link was visited. It's irrelevant information.

Could someone look into this?

Someone would have to hop into the site theme's CSS and alter one line of CSS code though!

[Pegasus]

Hi Finn!

Thanks so much for the suggestion - that's a good suggestion and a clear one. It's actually something that I've been discussing with the tech support we have. As per this announcement we're building a new site that we'll be able to move the whole database (migrating all posts etc) into with an up to date version of phpBB.

The issue I was talking about with the tech support guy is that some people like to have a light CS, others like to have a dark one etc. ANY default colour potentially has the issue of being unreadable on someone's CS. However, the conclusion we've come to is that (very long story short) life is hard like that and a decision needs to be made. I agree that the two colours (clicked and unclicked) being the same is most useful. That has been added to the list for the new site, but since we are literally mid-build I wonder if you could hang fire on that on this one, since we're hoping to be able to go live within a month.

Note hoping there. If not, nudge me and we'll look again?

PS: I've filed it as a "Bug Report" which is the system were using for "bugs" and "ohhh, can we also!" This means it won't get lost / forgotten.

[Finnegan O'Connor]

I knew you'd be on top of this! I'm aware of the new site plans and the new theme and everything, so I wasn't really expecting this to be fixed on the current theme and current phpBB installation. More just something to be aware of for the new site. I should've mentioned that in the initial post, but here's the clarification anyway.

Regarding new site and new theme(s). I wouldn't be remotely surprised if there's some way to install two themes (I know multiple themes can be installed on a phpBB forum) and let the user select which one they want to use. Far as I know you're going for the "Milk" phpBB theme, right? I looked it up the other day, and if I am not mistaken it comes in light and dark variants. Should be possible to install both and let the users decide (with a dropdown at the bottom of the page) which one they want to use.

Maybe that's a good solution?

EDIT: Just checked on the official phpBB site and confirmed that installing two styles and making it possible for the user to select which one they wanna use is possible and easy as pie.

[Pegasus]

So, this is all done and sorted. If there's any underlying / remaining issues, give me a shout!