Beginner seeks help with css problem

[Ian]

'm hoping someone can help me resolve a problem I am having with
stylesheets. I've only just started usinbg them so it's more than
likely something similar. Trouble is I don't seem to be able to fix it
so would be grateful for any help.

Basically I'm working with a web page I inherited which has a menu in
which the layout/colours are something like this:

Heading (always yellow)
- Link (always white irrespective of visited or not etc but hover adds
an underline
- Link (always white irrespective of visited or not etc but hover adds
an underline
- Link (always white irrespective of visited or not etc but hover adds
an underline

ete etc
The css code I inherited is as follows:
..leftNav {
font: bold 14px Helvetica, arial;
color: #FFFFFF;
background: #663333 center;
letter-spacing: .01em;
}
td.leftNav {
font: bold 14px Helvetica, arial;
color: #FFFFFF;
text-decoration: none;
background: #663333 center;
letter-spacing: .01em;
border-top: 1px solid #000033;
border-left: 1px solid #000033;
}

td.leftNav ul {
display: block;
list-style: none;
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
}

td.leftNav li {
display: block;
padding: 5px 0px;
border-bottom: 2px solid #FFFFFF;
}

td.leftNav li a:link, a:visited, {
font-weight: bold;
color:#ffffff;
text-decoration: none;
border: none;
background: transparent;
}

td.leftNav li a:hover {font-weight: bold;
font-weight: bold;
color:#ffffff;
text-decoration: underline;
border: none;
background: transparent;
}

..menuitem { color: #FFFF00 !important; }
What I now want to be able to add is a completely new separate table in
which there are links which are ALWAYS yellow irrespective of visited,
active or not, with no underline. Maybe they could change colour on
hover but it doesn't matter. I've tried various attempts at this but I
always seem to end up changing the colours of the other links on the
page in the main menu and can't understand why. So, any help would be
great.

[Philip Herlihy]

Personally I find it much easier to look at a "live" published example
rather than try to visualise what CSS code will look like, especially if
trying to spot a problem. You might like to publish your attempts so far?

If you want to have a specific table (or set of tables) have different link
styling, you should probably give the new table a class, and then pick out
the link properties by context.

So if you have a table of class="myNewTable" you could pick out links inside
it like this:

table.myNewTable a:link,
table.myNewTable a:visited,
table.myNewTable a:hover,
table.myNewTable a:active {
color: yellow;
}

Note that browser have their own default style sheets (which you have to
guess at and then override) so it's important (eg) to specify all variants
of a link or you may see this default styling.

I agree that it's useful to show hover and visited states, and if a link is
slow, it's also useful to show the user that a link is active (so he/she can
see that it "noticed" the click!).

--
####################
## PH, London
####################
"Ian" <ia*@home.com> wrote in message
news:v4********************************@4ax.com...

What I now want to be able to add is a completely new separate table in
which there are links which are ALWAYS yellow irrespective of visited,
active or not, with no underline. Maybe they could change colour on
hover but it doesn't matter. I've tried various attempts at this but I
always seem to end up changing the colours of the other links on the
page in the main menu and can't understand why. So, any help would be
great.

[Ian]

On 29 May 2005 19:00:33 GMT, Blinky the Shark <no*****@box.invalid>
wrote:

Ian wrote:

What I now want to be able to add is a completely new separate table in
which there are links which are ALWAYS yellow irrespective of visited,
active or not, with no underline. Maybe they could change colour on

Why do you want to confuse me by not letting me see which links I've
already used?

Because they are not links to other web sites but represent the names of
people who are logged on to the message forum associated with the site.
Clicking on the names brings up the profile of the person but the
display looks naff when the names are in mixed colours.

[Blinky the Shark]

Ian wrote:

On 29 May 2005 19:00:33 GMT, Blinky the Shark <no*****@box.invalid>
wrote:

Ian wrote:

What I now want to be able to add is a completely new separate table in
which there are links which are ALWAYS yellow irrespective of visited,
active or not, with no underline. Maybe they could change colour on

Why do you want to confuse me by not letting me see which links I've
already used?

Because they are not links to other web sites but represent the names of
people who are logged on to the message forum associated with the site.
Clicking on the names brings up the profile of the person but the
display looks naff when the names are in mixed colours.

I still want to know where I've been.

--
Blinky Linux Registered User 297263
Killing all Usenet posts from Google Groups
Info: http://blinkynet.net/comp/uip5.html
*ALSO contains links for access to the NON-BETA GG archive interface*

[Ian]

On Sun, 29 May 2005 20:56:19 +0000 (UTC), "Philip Herlihy"
<fo******@herlihy.eu.veil.com> wrote:

Personally I find it much easier to look at a "live" published example
rather than try to visualise what CSS code will look like, especially if
trying to spot a problem. You might like to publish your attempts so far?

If you want to have a specific table (or set of tables) have different link
styling, you should probably give the new table a class, and then pick out
the link properties by context.

So if you have a table of class="myNewTable" you could pick out links inside
it like this:

table.myNewTable a:link,
table.myNewTable a:visited,
table.myNewTable a:hover,
table.myNewTable a:active {
color: yellow;
}

Note that browser have their own default style sheets (which you have to
guess at and then override) so it's important (eg) to specify all variants
of a link or you may see this default styling.

I agree that it's useful to show hover and visited states, and if a link is
slow, it's also useful to show the user that a link is active (so he/she can
see that it "noticed" the click!).

Thanks very much for the example, I tried it and it seems to have done
the trick although I had to additionally define the default links for it
to work in Firefox which is my preferred browser. All seems OK now
though.

[Blinky the Shark]

Ian wrote:

What I now want to be able to add is a completely new separate table in
which there are links which are ALWAYS yellow irrespective of visited,
active or not, with no underline. Maybe they could change colour on

Why do you want to confuse me by not letting me see which links I've
already used?

--
Blinky Linux Registered User 297263
Killing all Usenet posts from Google Groups
Info: http://blinkynet.net/comp/uip5.html
*ALSO contains links for access to the NON-BETA GG archive interface*

[AES]

In article <sl********************@thurston.blinkynet.net>,
Blinky the Shark <no*****@box.invalid> wrote:

What I now want to be able to add is a completely new separate table in
which there are links which are ALWAYS yellow irrespective of visited,
active or not, with no underline. Maybe they could change colour on

Why do you want to confuse me by not letting me see which links I've
already used?

Just for info, the links in the bodies of the short blog messages that
are reproduced on Ariana Huffington's web site

<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/>

seem to work this way.

Typographically it looks considerably neater to me without the
underlining; and since each message is short and only contains a few
links, and once you've read or skimmed one message and gone on to the
next you're unlikely to go back to the earlier one, perhaps recording
which links have been used is less necessary or useful.

In any event, as a novice question, if you have several links to the
same identical URL at different places within a web page, and a visitor
follows one of those links and then returns to the starting page, under
standard HTLM do (or should) _all_ of those links change color? -- or
only the one that was clicked on?

[Blinky the Shark]

AES wrote:

In article <sl********************@thurston.blinkynet.net>,
Blinky the Shark <no*****@box.invalid> wrote:

> What I now want to be able to add is a completely new separate table in
> which there are links which are ALWAYS yellow irrespective of visited,
> active or not, with no underline. Maybe they could change colour on

Why do you want to confuse me by not letting me see which links I've
already used?

Just for info, the links in the bodies of the short blog messages that
are reproduced on Ariana Huffington's web site <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/> seem to work this way.
Bummer.
Typographically it looks considerably neater to me without the
underlining; and since each message is short and only contains a few
links, and once you've read or skimmed one message and gone on to the
next you're unlikely to go back to the earlier one, perhaps recording
which links have been used is less necessary or useful.
And perhaps not.

I don't mind no underlining. I very much mind the absence of the
distinctive link color for visited links.
In any event, as a novice question, if you have several links to the
same identical URL at different places within a web page, and a visitor
follows one of those links and then returns to the starting page, under
standard HTLM do (or should) _all_ of those links change color? -- or
only the one that was clicked on?

I would think they all would.

--
Blinky Linux Registered User 297263
Killing all Usenet posts from Google Groups
Info: http://blinkynet.net/comp/uip5.html
*ALSO contains links for access to the NON-BETA GG archive interface*

[Philip Herlihy]

Personally I find it much easier to look at a "live" published example
rather than try to visualise what CSS code will look like, especially if
trying to spot a problem. You might like to publish your attempts so far?

If you want to have a specific table (or set of tables) have different link
styling, you should probably give the new table a class, and then pick out
the link properties by context.

So if you have a table of class="myNewTable" you could pick out links inside
it like this:

table.myNewTable a:link,
table.myNewTable a:visited,
table.myNewTable a:hover,
table.myNewTable a:active {
color: yellow;
}

Note that browser have their own default style sheets (which you have to
guess at and then override) so it's important (eg) to specify all variants
of a link or you may see this default styling.

I agree that it's useful to show hover and visited states, and if a link is
slow, it's also useful to show the user that a link is active (so he/she can
see that it "noticed" the click!).

--
####################
## PH, London
####################
"Ian" <ia*@home.com> wrote in message
news:v4********************************@4ax.com...

What I now want to be able to add is a completely new separate table in
which there are links which are ALWAYS yellow irrespective of visited,
active or not, with no underline. Maybe they could change colour on
hover but it doesn't matter. I've tried various attempts at this but I
always seem to end up changing the colours of the other links on the
page in the main menu and can't understand why. So, any help would be
great.

[Ian]

On 29 May 2005 19:00:33 GMT, Blinky the Shark <no*****@box.invalid>
wrote:

Ian wrote:

What I now want to be able to add is a completely new separate table in
which there are links which are ALWAYS yellow irrespective of visited,
active or not, with no underline. Maybe they could change colour on

Why do you want to confuse me by not letting me see which links I've
already used?

Because they are not links to other web sites but represent the names of
people who are logged on to the message forum associated with the site.
Clicking on the names brings up the profile of the person but the
display looks naff when the names are in mixed colours.

[Blinky the Shark]

Ian wrote:

On 29 May 2005 19:00:33 GMT, Blinky the Shark <no*****@box.invalid>
wrote:

Ian wrote:

What I now want to be able to add is a completely new separate table in
which there are links which are ALWAYS yellow irrespective of visited,
active or not, with no underline. Maybe they could change colour on

Why do you want to confuse me by not letting me see which links I've
already used?

Because they are not links to other web sites but represent the names of
people who are logged on to the message forum associated with the site.
Clicking on the names brings up the profile of the person but the
display looks naff when the names are in mixed colours.

I still want to know where I've been.

--
Blinky Linux Registered User 297263
Killing all Usenet posts from Google Groups
Info: http://blinkynet.net/comp/uip5.html
*ALSO contains links for access to the NON-BETA GG archive interface*

[Ian]

On Sun, 29 May 2005 20:56:19 +0000 (UTC), "Philip Herlihy"
<fo******@herlihy.eu.veil.com> wrote:

Personally I find it much easier to look at a "live" published example
rather than try to visualise what CSS code will look like, especially if
trying to spot a problem. You might like to publish your attempts so far?

If you want to have a specific table (or set of tables) have different link
styling, you should probably give the new table a class, and then pick out
the link properties by context.

So if you have a table of class="myNewTable" you could pick out links inside
it like this:

table.myNewTable a:link,
table.myNewTable a:visited,
table.myNewTable a:hover,
table.myNewTable a:active {
color: yellow;
}

Note that browser have their own default style sheets (which you have to
guess at and then override) so it's important (eg) to specify all variants
of a link or you may see this default styling.

I agree that it's useful to show hover and visited states, and if a link is
slow, it's also useful to show the user that a link is active (so he/she can
see that it "noticed" the click!).

Thanks very much for the example, I tried it and it seems to have done
the trick although I had to additionally define the default links for it
to work in Firefox which is my preferred browser. All seems OK now
though.