Visited Link Color

[Guest]

Hi,
I'm generating WebHelp with RH7. Each time I regenerate, the links I visited many moons ago, retain the purple color (as designated in the Visited style in the CSS). Shouldn't regeneration ensure that the links go back to blue (the Link style in CSS)?
Is this an IE thing? I've cleared my IE history, thinking it might retain the color properties. I have also switched the CSS order to LoVHAte. No luck.
My goal is to have a generated help system that displays the links as if they have never been visited. I'd like the separate color to work for Visited links in the final help.
Any ideas?
Thanks.

[Guest]

If I understand correctly what you're asking for, you should be able to get what you want by changing the a:visited color property in your stylesheet to the same color as unvisited links. Then it should always look the same color, visited or not.

Hope this helps,

Ben

[Guest]

Hi Ben,
Thanks for your input. I have identified that as a workaround.
But, what I actually want is...1) previously visited links go back to blue when I regenerate the help. I don't want the help I distribute to have purple links. 2) When a user clicks a link in the generated help, I want that link to retain the purple for the session. The next time the user opens the help, links are blue.
The session stuff might be a stretch...but I would like a user to see a purple link.
Thanks.

[Peter Grainge]

Clearing the IE history should restore the colour on your PC.

Look at the help from another PC and you should see only one colour when the help is first accessed. The links will then only change colour if they are not specified to be the same.

I think there is something in Snippets on my site about all this.

[Guest]

Hi Peter,
As always, thanks for your reply.
I have done as you suggested, to no avail. Even after clearing the history on my PC, links still appear purple. Further, the purple carries over to other users as well, even though they have never used the links.
The "visited" designation appears to be embedded in the output...I don't know if that's possible, but it sounds good.
Any other thoughts?
Thanks.

[Peter Grainge]

So with your help sitting on a server, you access it and click say the very first link and it changes colour. Then another person accesses that help from the server but using their PC and that link shows as visited before they click it?

Following that logic, if I visit some site and the links change, then you visit it and don't click a link but the links show to you as visited. Not possible. The visited links are held on each PC for each user.

[Guest]

Okay. Sorry. Perhaps I wasn't very clear.
The issue is that the links are purple before they are even clicked. I clear the IE history, then I generate help from my PC. Any link that I visited prior to generation retains its purple state in the generated help.
Does this clarify the issue.
Thanks.

[MergeThis]

Are you calling multiple style sheets in your topics? If so, the first one listed would, I believe, override styles in the other(s).

There could only be two other reasons that I can think of:

1. There's some cache setting that's not allowing the cache to clear after a session.

2. The styles are not written like the following, which has worked beautifully for us. Note the expanded letter-spacing we use to differentiate the link visually where we only underline the hover mode.


Good luck,
Leon

[Guest]

Thank you for the suggestions and the sample CSS info. I'll give it a go.

[Jinx1]

ConTextCB, I'm having the same problem exactly as you describe. 1) Did the code fix your problem? If so, 2) can you pretty please tell me how to insert it into my css? I have only 1 css. thanx!

[Guest]

Hijinx,
If memory serves me correctly, I addressed the problem using a combination of suggestions from responders.
The Authoring/HTML section of Peter Grainge's site (URL in his reply) includes a discussion of style order within the CSS. As I recall, that was key information.
I also cleaned up the RH-generated CSS a bit. For some reason, it repeatedly adds the following comment: "/*Created with Adobe RoboHelp.*/"
Good luck.

[Guest]

I just generated WebHelp and had the same problem of the visited link color appearing in the generated system. I finally remembered how to resolve it: in my browser options, I cleared the history and the cache. That works every time.