CSS Links

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With CSS, links can be styled in many different ways.

Text Link Text Link Link Button Link Button

Styling Links

Links can be styled with any CSS property (e.g. color, font-family, background, etc.).

Example

a {
color: hotpink;
}

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In addition, links can be styled differently depending on what state they are in.

The four links states are:

a:link – a normal, unvisited link
a:visited – a link the user has visited
a:hover – a link when the user mouses over it
a:active – a link the moment it is clicked

Example

/* unvisited link */
a:link {
color: red;
}

/* visited link */
a:visited {
color: green;
}

/* mouse over link */
a:hover {
color: hotpink;
}

/* selected link */
a:active {
color: blue;
}

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When setting the style for several link states, there are some order rules:

a:hover MUST come after a:link and a:visited
a:active MUST come after a:hover

Text Decoration

The text-decoration property is mostly used to remove underlines from links:

Example

a:link {
text-decoration: none;
}

a:visited {
text-decoration: none;
}

a:hover {
text-decoration: underline;
}

a:active {
text-decoration: underline;
}

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Background Color

The background-color property can be used to specify a background color for links:

Example

a:link {
  background-color: yellow;
}

a:visited {
background-color: cyan;
}

a:hover {
  background-color: lightgreen;
}

a:active {
  background-color: hotpink;
}

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Link Buttons

This example demonstrates a more advanced example where we combine several CSS properties to display links as boxes/buttons:

Example

a:link, a:visited {
  background-color: #f44336;
color: white;
padding: 14px 25px;
  text-align: center;
  text-decoration: none;
  display: inline-block;
}

a:hover, a:active {
  background-color: red;
}

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More Examples

Example

This example demonstrates how to add other styles to hyperlinks:

a.one:link {color: #ff0000;}
a.one:visited {color: #0000ff;}
a.one:hover {color: #ffcc00;}

a.two:link {color: #ff0000;}
a.two:visited {color: #0000ff;}
a.two:hover {font-size: 150%;}

a.three:link {color: #ff0000;}
a.three:visited {color: #0000ff;}
a.three:hover {background: #66ff66;}

a.four:link {color: #ff0000;}
a.four:visited {color: #0000ff;}
a.four:hover {font-family: monospace;}

a.five:link {color: #ff0000; text-decoration: none;}
a.five:visited {color: #0000ff; text-decoration: none;}
a.five:hover {text-decoration: underline;}

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Example

Another example of how to create link boxes/buttons:

a:link, a:visited {
background-color: white;
color: black;
border: 2px solid green;
padding: 10px 20px;
text-align: center;
text-decoration: none;
display: inline-block;
}

a:hover, a:active {
background-color: green;
color: white;
}

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Example

This example demonstrates the different types of cursors (can be useful for links):

auto 
crosshair 
default 
e-resize 
help 
move 
n-resize 
ne-resize 
nw-resize 
pointer 
progress 
s-resize 
se-resize 
sw-resize 
text 
w-resize 
wait

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Test Yourself With Exercises

Exercise:

Set the color of links to “red”.

<style>
 {
  color: red;
}
</style>

<body>
  <h1>This is a heading</h1>
  <p>This is a paragraph</p>
  <a href="http://w3schools.com">This is a link</a>
</body>

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Start the Exercise

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