this post was submitted on 19 May 2025
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[–] cypherpunks@lemmy.ml 50 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)
[–] jol@discuss.tchncs.de 30 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

For a long time this protection was so strict in firefox that even the dev tools was not allowed to see the :visited styles.

[–] 30p87@feddit.org 15 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

I hate that, in the modern web, customizing is so important that websites want access to the link itself, instead of just stylizing the div outside like normal.

[–] jol@discuss.tchncs.de 11 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I'm not sure I understand the point you're making?

[–] 30p87@feddit.org 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

That I don't want any website customizing the color, font etc. of links. Therefore, they shouldn't need access to any properties of those objects after they have been created.

[–] jol@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 2 weeks ago

You can use user styles for that

[–] PotatoesFall@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 2 weeks ago

TIL, thanks

[–] said 49 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

For those who are curious about its history, this is where it all began for the visited links to be that color by default.

Date: Mon, 12 Apr 93 02:38:29 -0500

Subject: NCSA Mosaic 0.13 released.

  • Changed default anchor representations: blue and single solid underline for unvisited, dark purple and single dashed underline for visited.
[–] MagicChicken@lemmy.world 21 points 2 weeks ago

A dashed underline would make it a lot better and accessible. Don't think I've seen a browser do that by default

[–] _cnt0@sh.itjust.works 21 points 2 weeks ago

I like to style visited links blue and unvisited links purple, just to mess with people.

[–] orockwell@lemmy.world 13 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

great example of a code smell, too! JS needs to know about styles?

shouldn't be styling in JS! make it asd/remove a class instead

need to know whether to load content or not? save it to local/session storage! don't make a server call if it already exists!

need to enhance your tracking? include it with your payloads as it happens, you're asking for race conditions

client side disabled local caching? great! working as intended. make a graceful fall-back

everything here is a short term problem that belies long term tech debt. tight coupling sounds sexy, but SOLID principals and The Law of Demeter exist to stop our codebases from rotting if we can't change it, then it's not software it's hardware

[–] mmddmm@lemm.ee 8 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

JS needs to know about styles?

It's about JS trying to detect if the link was visited, not about style. People used to do that to evade cross-site tracking protection, and this is why JS isn't allowed to know that anymore.

[–] Nomad@infosec.pub 4 points 2 weeks ago

This. Did a seminar on these techniques during my it security degree. Porn sites invented that to detect people that use competing sites.

[–] orockwell@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

hence the comment about tracking ;) anything more than recording your events as they happen are a security and privacy risk

[–] sik0fewl@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 weeks ago

great example of a code smell, too! JS needs to know about styles?

shouldn't be styling in JS!

But what if I want to use JSSS?

[–] tuxiqae@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 week ago

Sheesh, because of their colors at the bottom my mind interpreted purple and blue as purple and yellow and it got me hella confused