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A free scan shows the junk files, broken settings and background clutter dragging Windows down - then fixes them in one click.Free scan · Windows 10 & 11Early CSS let authors style links differently depending on whether a destination had been visited, whether a pointer was over the link, or whether the user was activating it. CSS2 defined four anchor states—:link, :visited, :hover, and :active—but today browsers limit what visited-link styling can change and what a page can learn from it, because browsing history is sensitive.
What did CSS2 mean by its four link states?
CSS2 described four pseudo-classes for links. :link matched a link before its target had been visited; :visited matched after a visit; :hover applied while the user designated the link without activating it; and :active applied during activation. The definitions appear in the W3C CSS2 selector text.
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The standard stated, “The four states are mutually exclusive.” It also gave a preference order for cases where more than one state might otherwise appear to apply: :active, then :hover, then :visited, then :link. CSS2 also noted that a user agent could eventually return a link from visited to unvisited status; visited state was not necessarily permanent.
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Which HTML elements can match link-history selectors?
HTML 5.1 specifies that a, area, and link elements with an href attribute must match one of :link or :visited. The rule is described in the HTML 5.1 selector-matching text. That document also recognizes that more specific rules may mitigate privacy concerns.
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Why is modern CSS usually written in LVHA order?
CSS2’s state-preference order describes overlap among states; it is not the recommended order for writing author stylesheets. For ordinary CSS, MDN recommends :link, :visited, :hover, :active—often called LVHA. When selectors have equal specificity, later declarations can take precedence, so putting hover and active rules after link and visited rules lets interaction styles win.
a:link { color: blue; }
a:visited { color: purple; }
a:hover { text-decoration: underline; }
a:active { color: red; }This illustrates selector order, not a guaranteed default appearance across browsers. See MDN’s references for :link and :visited.
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Why can’t a page freely inspect visited links?
If a site could determine which links a visitor had followed elsewhere, it could infer browsing history. Current privacy protections therefore constrain both the matching model and the information exposed to page code.
The Selectors Level 4 specification describes visited-history matching scoped by destination URL, the origin of the page that initiated navigation, and the top-level site. Its examples explain how this scoping can prevent cross-site tracking through embedded frames.
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In practice, MDN documents several limits on :visited:
- Only a restricted set of color-related properties may be affected.
- Alpha-channel behavior is constrained to prevent styles from revealing whether a link was visited.
getComputedStyle()returns the non-visited value for a visited link.- DOM selector APIs do not reveal whether an element matched
:visited.
These safeguards preserve a useful visual cue without offering a general-purpose way for a website to read a person’s browsing history.
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What can the early standards text establish?
The CSS2 source establishes how the four states were defined and how their overlap was ordered in that standard. It does not establish which browser implemented them first or provide a reliable browser-by-browser adoption chronology. The early history can therefore be described confidently as a standards model, but not as a documented sequence of browser releases.
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