Styling links
When styling links , it's important to understand how to make use of pseudo-classes to style their states effectively. It's also important to know how to style links for use in common interface features whose content varies, such as navigation menus and tabs. We'll look at both these topics in this article.
| Prerequisites: | HTML basics (study Introduction to HTML ), CSS basics (study Introduction to CSS ), CSS text and font fundamentals . |
|---|---|
| Objective: | To learn how to style link states, and how to use links effectively in common UI features like navigation menus. |
Let's look at some links
We looked at how links are implemented in your HTML according to best practices in Creating hyperlinks . In this article we'll build on this knowledge, showing you the best practices for styling them.
Link states
The first thing to understand is the concept of link states — different states that links can exist in. These can be styled using different pseudo-classes :
-
Link
: A link that has a destination (i.e., not just a named anchor), styled using the
:linkpseudo class. -
Visited
: A link that has already been visited (exists in the browser's history), styled using the
:visitedpseudo class. -
Hover
: A link that is hovered over by a user's mouse pointer, styled using the
:hoverpseudo class. -
Focus
: A link that is focused (e.g., moved to by a keyboard user using the
Tab
key or something similar, or programmatically focused using
HTMLElement.focus()) — this is styled using the:focuspseudo class. -
Active
: A link that is activated (e.g., clicked on), styled using the
:activepseudo class.
Default styles
The example below illustrates what a link will look and behave like by default; though the CSS is enlarging and centering the text to make it stand out more. You can compare the look and behavior of the default stylings in the example with the look and behavior of other links on this page which have more CSS styles applied. Default links have the following properties:
- Links are underlined.
- Unvisited links are blue.
- Visited links are purple.
- Hovering a link makes the mouse pointer change to a little hand icon.
- Focused links have an outline around them — you should be able to focus on the links on this page with the keyboard by pressing the tab key. (On Mac, you'll need to use option + tab , or enable the Full Keyboard Access: All controls option by pressing Ctrl + F7 .)
- Active links are red. Try holding down the mouse button on the link as you click it.
<
p
>
<
a
href
=
"
#"
>
A simple link
</
a
>
</
p
>
p
{
font-size
:
2rem;
text-align
:
center;
}
Note:
All the link examples on this page link to the top of their window. The empty fragment (href="#"
) is used to create simple examples and ensure the live examples, which are each contained in an
<iframe >
, don't break.
Interestingly enough, these default styles are nearly the same as they were back in the early days of browsers in the mid-1990s. This is because users know and have come to expect this behavior — if links were styled differently, it would confuse a lot of people. This doesn't mean that you shouldn't style links at all. It just means that you shouldn't stray too far from the expected behavior. You should at least:
- Use underlining for links, but not for other things. If you don't want to underline links, at least highlight them in some other way.
- Make them react in some way when hovered/focused, and in a slightly different way when activated.
The default styles can be turned off/changed using the following CSS properties:
-
colorfor the text color. -
cursorfor the mouse pointer style — you shouldn't turn this off unless you've got a very good reason. -
outlinefor the text outline. An outline is similar to a border. The only difference is that a border takes up space in the box and an outline doesn't; it just sits over the top of the background. The outline is a useful accessibility aid, so should not be removed without adding another method of indicating the focused link.
Note: You are not just limited to the above properties to style your links — you are free to use any properties you like.
Styling some links
Now that we've looked at the default states in some detail, let's look at a typical set of link styles.
To start off with, we'll write out our empty rulesets:
a
{
}
a:link
{
}
a:visited
{
}
a:focus
{
}
a:hover
{
}
a:active
{
}
This order is important because link styles build on one another. For example, the styles in the first rule will apply to all the subsequent ones. When a link is activated, it's usually also hovered over. If you put these in the wrong order, and you're changing the same properties in each ruleset, things won't work as you expect. To remember the order, you could try using a mnemonic like L oV e F ears HA te.
Now let's add some more information to get this styled properly:
body
{
width
:
300px;
margin
:
0 auto;
font-size
:
1.2rem;
font-family
:
sans-serif;
}
p
{
line-height
:
1.4;
}
a
{
outline-color
:
transparent;
}
a:link
{
color
:
#6900ff;
}
a:visited
{
color
:
#a5c300;
}
a:focus
{
text-decoration
:
none;
background
:
#bae498;
}
a:hover
{
text-decoration
:
none;
background
:
#cdfeaa;
}
a:active
{
background
:
#6900ff;
color
:
#cdfeaa;
}
We'll also provide some sample HTML to apply the CSS to:
<
p
>
There are several browsers available, such as
<
a
href
=
"
#"
>
Mozilla Firefox
</
a
>
,
<
a
href
=
"
#"
>
Google Chrome
</
a
>
, and
<
a
href
=
"
#"
>
Microsoft Edge
</
a
>
.
</
p
>
Putting the two together gives us this result:
So what did we do here? This certainly looks different to the default styling, but it still provides a familiar enough experience for users to know what's going on:
- The first two rules are not that interesting to this discussion.
-
The third rule uses the
aselector to get rid of the focus outline (which varies across browsers anyway). -
Next, we use the
a:linkanda:visitedselectors to set a couple of color variations on unvisited and visited links, so they are distinct. -
The next two rules use
a:focusanda:hoverto set focused and hovered links to have no underline and different background colors. -
Finally,
a:activeis used to give the links an inverted color scheme while they are being activated, to make it clear something important is happening!
Active learning: Style your own links
In this active learning session, we'd like you to take our empty set of rules and add your own declarations to make the links look really cool. Use your imagination, go wild. We are sure you can come up with something cooler and just as functional as our example above.
If you make a mistake, you can always reset it using the Reset button. If you get really stuck, press the Show solution button to insert the example we showed above.
Including icons on links
A common practice is to include icons on links to provide more of an indicator as to what kind of content the link points to. Let's look at a really simple example that adds an icon to external links (links that lead to other sites). Such an icon usually looks like a little arrow pointing out of a box. For this example, we'll use this great example from icons8.com .
Let's look at some HTML and CSS that will give us the effect we want. First, some simple HTML to style:
<
p
>
For more information on the weather, visit our
<
a
href
=
"
#"
>
weather page
</
a
>
,
look at
<
a
href
=
"
https://en.wikipedia.org/"
>
weather on Wikipedia
</
a
>
, or check
out
<
a
href
=
"
https://www.nationalgeographic.org/topics/resource-library-weather/"
>
weather on National Geographic
</
a
>
.
</
p
>
Next, the CSS:
body
{
width
:
300px;
margin
:
0 auto;
font-family
:
sans-serif;
}
p
{
line-height
:
1.4;
}
a
{
outline-color
:
transparent;
text-decoration
:
none;
padding
:
2px 1px 0;
}
a:link
{
color
:
blue;
}
a:visited
{
color
:
purple;
}
a:focus,
a:hover
{
border-bottom
:
1px solid;
}
a:active
{
color
:
red;
}
a[href^="http"]
{
background
:
url
(
"external-link-52.png"
)
no-repeat 100% 0;
background-size
:
16px 16px;
padding-right
:
19px;
}
So what's going on here? We'll skip over most of the CSS, as it's just the same information you've looked at before. The last rule, however, is interesting: we're inserting a custom background image on external links in a similar manner to how we handled custom bullets on list items
in the last article. This time, however, we're using the
background
shorthand instead of the individual properties. We set the path to the image we want to insert, specify no-repeat
so we only get one copy inserted, and then specify the position as 100% of the way to the right of the text content, and 0 pixels from the top.
We also use
background-size
to specify the size we want the background image to be shown at. It's useful to have a larger icon and then resize it like this as needed for responsive web design purposes. This does, however, only work with IE 9 and later. So if you need to support older browsers, you'll just have to resize the image and insert it as is.
Finally, we set some
padding-right
on the links to make space for the background image to appear in, so we aren't overlapping it with the text.
A final word: how did we select just external links? Well, if you are writing your HTML links
properly, you should only be using absolute URLs for external links — it is more efficient to use relative links to link to other parts of your own site (as with the first link). The text "http" should therefore only appear in external links (like the second and third ones), and we can select this with an attribute selector
: a[href^="http"]
selects
<a >
elements, but only if they have an
href
attribute with a value that begins with "http".
So that's it. Try revisiting the active learning section above and trying this new technique out!
Note:
The href
values look strange — we've used dummy links here that don't really go anywhere. The reason for this is that if we used real links, you would be able to load an external site in the <iframe >
the live example is embedded in, thereby losing the example.
Note: Don't worry if you are not familiar with backgrounds and responsive web design yet; these are explained in other places.
Styling links as buttons
The tools you've explored so far in this article can also be used in other ways. For example, states like hover can be used to style many different elements, not just links — you might want to style the hover state of paragraphs, list items, or other things.
In addition, links are quite commonly styled to look and behave like buttons in certain circumstances. A website navigation menu can be marked up as a set of links, and this can be styled to look like a set of control buttons or tabs that provide the user with access to other parts of the site. Let's explore how.
First, some HTML:
<
nav
class
=
"
container"
>
<
a
href
=
"
#"
>
Home
</
a
>
<
a
href
=
"
#"
>
Pizza
</
a
>
<
a
href
=
"
#"
>
Music
</
a
>
<
a
href
=
"
#"
>
Wombats
</
a
>
<
a
href
=
"
#"
>
Finland
</
a
>
</
nav
>
And now our CSS:
body,
html
{
margin
:
0;
font-family
:
sans-serif;
}
.container
{
display
:
flex;
gap
:
0.625%;
}
a
{
flex
:
1;
text-decoration
:
none;
outline-color
:
transparent;
text-align
:
center;
line-height
:
3;
color
:
black;
}
a:link,
a:visited,
a:focus
{
background
:
palegoldenrod;
color
:
black;
}
a:hover
{
background
:
orange;
}
a:active
{
background
:
darkred;
color
:
white;
}
This gives us the following result:
The HTML defines a
<nav >
element with a "container"
class. The <nav >
contains our links.
The CSS includes the styling for the container and the links it contains.
-
The second rule says:
- The container is a flexbox . The items it contains — the links, in this case — will be flex items .
-
The gap between the flex items will be
0.625%of the container's width.
-
The third rule styles the links:
-
The first declaration,
flex: 1, means that the widths of the items will be adjusted so they use all the available space in the container. -
Next, we turn off the default
text-decorationandoutline— we don't want those spoiling our look. -
The last three declarations are to center the text inside each link, set the
line-heightto 3 to give the buttons some height (which also has the advantage of centering the text vertically), and set the text color to black.
-
The first declaration,
Summary
We hope this article has provided you with all you'll need to know about links — for now! The final article in our Styling text module details how to use custom fonts on your websites (or web fonts, as they are better known).