custom link colours feature breaks website layouts

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andy08003
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custom link colours feature breaks website layouts

Unread post by andy08003 » 2021-09-27, 11:09

Hi all

I have trouble distinguishing the two colours used for “Unvisited links” and for “Visited links”.

If I customise these two colours then select “Always” in “Override the colours specified by the page with my selection above” I see my custom colours but then the layout of most pages is screwed up.

Why is this?

Is there a way to ONLY modify the link colours and nothing else?

FYI: I am using Windows 10 and the Palemoon version 29.4.1

Thank you

Andy

Lucio Chiappetti
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Re: custom link colours feature breaks website layouts

Unread post by Lucio Chiappetti » 2021-09-27, 11:50

Do you have the problem on all sites or only on certain sites ?
In the latter case you can use the NoSquint addon to change the colours of visited and unvisited links for a specific site only (I did that for my institute site since when it was redesigned with a darkish theme)
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athenian200
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Re: custom link colours feature breaks website layouts

Unread post by athenian200 » 2021-09-28, 00:15

As far as I know, there currently isn't a way to do that.

The override sets the preference "browser.display.document_color_use", to either always override, never override, or only override high contrast themes. It seems to be an all-or-nothing setting.
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Re: custom link colours feature breaks website layouts

Unread post by Moonchild » 2021-09-28, 06:49

Websites normally style links and link colours. If those are unreadable then that is a design flaw and you should point it out to the webmaster.
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Blacklab
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Re: custom link colours feature breaks website layouts

Unread post by Blacklab » 2021-09-28, 12:23

I was curious that making 'unvisited links' and 'visited links' on a webpage more obvious to the user wasn't in the 'most useful' category of display functions for any browser?

And if not a built-in browser function... then surely there must be a raft of Addons, CCS scripts, or Greasemonkey scripts out there to do it?

AFAICS the answer is that there were all of these options... and they're still out there if you do online searches... but all old... and none work now. I tried an assortment to be sure and none worked for me. :(

andy08003 isn't the first person to want better 'unvisited link' and 'visited link' colours and/or visibility (or some other highlighting or marking method)...and to wonder why 'overriding page colours' in the browser settings breaks pages? You can find similar questions asked about all the available browsers... including chrome-based ones. Often that will be a consequence of the way the web page was designed... as here in this 2017 Q&A on Firefox's Mozilla Support site:

"Override the colors specified by the page with your selections above" Breaks images: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1193062
andy08003 wrote:Why is this? Is there a way to ONLY modify the link colours and nothing else?
I think the answer is No. There isn't a way to ONLY modify the link colours and nothing else.

Reason... because the 'override page colours function for visited links' (CSS :visited) was discovered to be a possible security leak path to extracting peoples' browser history... and thus this option was closed-off a long while ago in all browsers starting with Mozilla's changes to Firefox code.

This lengthy 'Mozilla Hacks' note from way back in 2010 may explain what happened... and contains several other links... all well above my paygrade in browser coding and engineering:

Privacy-related changes coming to CSS :visited... https://hacks.mozilla.org/2010/03/priva ... -vistited/

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Re: custom link colours feature breaks website layouts

Unread post by vannilla » 2021-09-28, 17:29

Install Stylem from the add-ons site.
Use it to create a new stylesheet (you can decide to make it site-specific or try a global one) and put this CSS inside, changing the colors as you like (I picked "salmon" and "firebrick" randomly):

Code: Select all

a:visited {
   color: salmon !important;
}
a {
  color: firebrick !important;
}
Works on my machine™, so if it doesn't work for you maybe check your settings.

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Re: custom link colours feature breaks website layouts

Unread post by Goodydino » 2021-09-29, 18:47

You could also change the setting for one or both in a userContent.css file. That is the way I did it.

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andy08003
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Re: custom link colours feature breaks website layouts

Unread post by andy08003 » 2021-09-30, 10:53

Hi all

Thanks all - I appreciate all these high-quality answers.

This might be happening on all sites but it’s only really an issue on Google.

Good point about the design. As I see it, designers don’t have control over how each monitor displays colours or of course how each person sees so it's a conscious choice to provide accessible+pretty design for the majority rather than an accessible-for-all but less-pretty design (I'm thinking of Microsoft's garish High-Contrast scheme).

Just installed NoSquint - first impression is good - if it doesn't work I’ll give the other suggestions a try.

Andy

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