Suggestion for new link pseudo-class :current (or similar

It's entirely possible I'm an idiot, however, I think I see an opportunity for
a useful addition to the link pseudo-classes.

http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/selector.html#x27 states:

"The :link pseudo-class applies for links that have not yet been visited."
"The :visited pseudo-class applies once the link has been visited by the user."

Recently I've been building a site, and using a new idea on a navigation menu.
Once you get beyond a few pages, it's tedious to manage a code block between
pages, so one resorts to server side scripting to manage it. In this case, the
current page's entry in the menu is styled differently than the rest to
indicate the user's current location in the site.

However, I realized that maybe rather than changing the menu HTML server side,
I could just use a pseudo-class and style it differently, as one can have
unvisited and visited links styled differently automatically by the browser.
To my dismay, I discovered there is currently no method to do this.

My idea, which I'm certain has been bandied about a dozen times before, is to
add a :current (or some other name) pseudo-class that refers only to URLs that
match the currently loaded page, and can be styled differently like :visited
and :link. Already browsers have to determine if an URL is unvisited or not,
so I don't really see that this additional check would be a greater onus than
what they already do, and it could make life a little easier on developers,
less server side scripting.

Comments? I'd love to hear support, but also I'd like to hear why this would
be a bad idea.

Thanks.

-- 
Grey Hodge
 email [ grey @ thecloudygroup.com ]
 web   [ http://www.thecloudygroup.com ]
 motto [ Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler. - Einstein ]

Received on Monday, 30 July 2007 15:18:37 UTC