Re: activel inks?

Thanks for considering this,

I would prefer to use (well I can't wait to use it!)

a:current{
text-decoration: none
colour: black
}

a:hover{
colour: red
}

but I see that the same problem would apply in that when the mouse is moved
over the "current" link the colour would change and the underline would
reappear. I'm not sure it is that big an issue though because the hover
effect is only seen a very small percentage of the time and may not even be
seen at all. I don't know what the answer is but this issue also affects the
:visited pseudoclass too though I think, so your points 1 to 3 should apply
to that also, using the same logic (maybe even :link if you think about it -
really the nature of :hover means that it overrides other properties that
are not mouse-action related?). My intention with using the colours above is
that people aren't attracted to click the "current" link because they know
this is the page they are on already, so they wouldn't hover over it anyway.
Even if they did, for the rest of the time when the mouse wasn't over it it
would at least indicate that this was the current page using the correct
:current values. In a sense I envisage the :current making the "link" appear
not to be a link. Yes you could do this by changing html on each page, but
if you build a navigation bar in an external style sheet you can't do this.
(Building a nav bar in css is abusive of css maybe because the content is
not navigable without the specific css, but I've seen a few examples and it
is extremely useful to create a consistent navbar accross many pages using
less html).

You are absolutely correct about blurry nature of the discussion of the
:external links issue, I think that is why I think this would be better as a
html element. (Then let people have their own rules for what is an external
link and css just decorates it, because this is really deeper than a
presentational issue). Maybe if you could decide on an arbitrary rule for
external links though, it could be included in css before html. Any urls
outside subdomains might be OK, so in your example the second url would be
external. This would at least account for all the different .tripod (and
similar free isp) sites, but might cause some large corporate sites some
trouble (although alot have distinctly different sections in subdomains) and
there would still be the problem with ISPs that use just directories for
different sites.

Best Wishes,

Dave

----- Original Message -----
From: "Manos Batsis" <m.batsis@bsnet.gr>
To: "AMollah" <am@freephone.fsnet.co.uk>
Cc: <www-style@w3.org>
Sent: Tuesday, July 03, 2001 11:38 AM
Subject: RE: activel inks?



Ok ok.A consideration, in case inclusion of :current in the css spec is
decided.

So suppose we have
 a {
color : #000000;
}

a:current{
font-weight:bold;
}

a:hover{
font-weight : bold;
}

a:visited{
color : #c0c0c0;
}

This works fine. But it does so because :current and :hover have the
same attribute/value pair. But what if:

a:current{
color:red;
}

a:hover{
color:green;
}

The hover effect on the :current link will give the wrong impression
that this is *not* a current link.

IMHO, this is an interaction issue. Should a :current also have :hover?

Possible solution mechanisms:

1) Remove the ability of :hover from a :current link.

2) Leave the responsibility of this to the author, who should give the
same styling in both :current and :hover (possibly by grooping).

3) Do not include a :current pseudoclass in the spec. Instead, extend
the :hover state to include :current links.

Ok, I'm overdoing it.

About  :external, maybe a discussion on what is external and what not
should take place.
For example, if I am in

http://manos.org/main

and the link points to

http://work.manos.org/whatever

is it external?

Kindest regards,

Manos




> -----Original Message-----
> From: AMollah [mailto:am@freephone.fsnet.co.uk]
> Sent: Tuesday, July 03, 2001 1:18 PM
> To: Manos Batsis
> Cc: www-style@w3.org
> Subject: Re: activel inks?
>
>
> Thanks again Manos,
>
> Yes I know now N6 works for :hover (and other css better than
> IE5x) - my
> installation wasn't right. I'm sorry I was just being lazy with the
> newsgroup - I thought the link on w3.org would set up a new
> newsserver in
> outlook. That authoring newsgroup doesn't deal with issues
> like talking
> about what the css spec should include though, are there any?
>
> Ian Hickson made me realise I was being a little narrow
> minded with the
> :active property, of course it doesn't just apply to links
> and there are
> other situations in which it is more useful (like forms). But
> in relation to
> links in particular I would find it much more useful to know
> that a link was
> to the current page than to be told that I had clicked on it
> (if the link is
> highlighted with hover it isn't that difficult to tell you've
> clicked on
> it). And even if I wanted to be told that I had clicked on
> it, and this
> applies to forms too, I think the :focus property would be
> more useful than
> :active because it would continue telling me that I had
> clicked on it even
> if I clicked on it for only a short while (it might prevent
> me submitting
> the form twice). Finding what you are about to click on using
> hover is very
> important though.
>
> I agree with you that BeCss is a good way for making css
> extensible so that
> weird ideas can be implemented independently, but I think
> this issue still
> boils down not to whether there is a possible method for
> doing what I want
> to do (which of course there usually is in anything), but to
> whether you
> think the ":current" property as I have described it is an
> esoteric or weird
> property or whether you think it is of such general
> application that it
> ought to be a basic property. Similarly with
> external/internal links. Is
> this right?
>
> Best Wishes,
>
> Dave
>
>
>
>
>

Received on Wednesday, 4 July 2001 11:01:30 UTC