CSS Links

CSS LInks

You can apply the CSS that you already learned to links in order to change their backgrounds, colours, fonts, text style, etc. What we will learn in this lesson is that CSS allows you to define these properties differently depending on whether the link is unvisited, visited, active, or whether the cursor is on the link (hover). This makes it possible to add useful effects to help visitors navigate your website more easily. To control these effects you use what is called a CSS pseudo-class.

Links and pseudo-classes

A pseudo-class allows you to take into account different conditions or events when defining a property for an HTML tag. As you know, links are specified in HTML with <a> tags. We can therefore use 'a' as a selector for links in CSS. A basic example like the one seen below, simply changes the colour of all links to blue.

a {color: blue;}

The css code above would result in something like this (provided the HTML is already in place)

This is a link

Unlike different elements, links can have different states. It can be visited or not visited. You can use pseudo-classes to assign different styles to links. Use a:link and a:visited for unvisited and visited links respectively. Links that are active have the pseudo-class a:active and a:hover is when the cursor is on the link. See the example CSS code below.

a:link {color: #6699CC;} a:visited {color: #660099;} a:active {background-color: #FFFF00;} a:hover {color: orange; font-style: italic;}

It is particularly popular to create different effects when the cursor is over a link. We will therefore look at a few extra examples related to the pseudo-class :hover.

CSS a:hover example 1:

a:hover {letter-spacing: 10px; font-weight:bold; color:red;}

When hovered over, the CSS code above will change your links from...

This is a link

to

This is a link

CSS a:hover example 2:

a:hover{text-transform: uppercase; font-weight:bold; color:green; background-color:yellow;}

When hovered over, the CSS code above will change your links from...

This is a link

to

This is a link

The two CSS link a:hover examples give you an idea about the various possibilities for combining different properties. You should now try to create your own effects.

Next Up

In the next lesson we will learn the basics of using the HTML elements div and span along with the HTML attributes class and id to give you more control over editing your website with CSS.