Learn CSS3 to style your web pages

Know what is CSS, its uses and how to add? CSS Style for Text, Paragraphs, Tables, Links and Forms. Background image with CSS, Borders styles in CSS, Set margin and positions in CSS, etc.

CSS Links


With CSS, links can be styled in different ways.

Styling Links

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

See this example:

a {
    color: hotpink;
}

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

See this 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;
}

Text Decoration

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

See this example:

a:link {
    text-decoration: none;
}

a:visited {
    text-decoration: none;
}

a:hover {
    text-decoration: underline;
}

a:active {
    text-decoration: underline;
}

Background Color

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

See this example:

a:link {
    background-color: yellow;
}

a:visited {
    background-color: cyan;
}

a:hover {
    background-color: lightgreen;
}

a:active {
    background-color: hotpink;

Advanced - Link Buttons

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

See this 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;
}