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no change in visited link color

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on search list results, after clicking on a link, color of visited link does not change using Firefox 24 on Samsung Galaxy S4 running Jellybean 4.2.2.

on search list results, after clicking on a link, color of visited link does not change using Firefox 24 on Samsung Galaxy S4 running Jellybean 4.2.2.

All Replies (8)

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ljzim, although Firefox and most of the other browsers have default styling for visited links, it can be over ridden by the CSS that is used in the website.

Its the website create who has to set color for visited links, using a:visited its called PSEUDO Selector in css.

This not a problem with Firefox.

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With all due respect, this does appears to be a problem with Firefox, although not exclusively . When using the Samsung browser built-in to the Verizon Galaxy s4, the visited links in the Google search results do change color. Moreover, the visited links change color when using Dolphin set the Desktop user agent, whereas they do not when using the Dolphin Android user agent. I cannot imagine these results are controlled by the website, can you?

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I can. Websites can be extremely complicated. Most likely Google is serving different code to Firefox for Android. Google would need to show some interest in resolving the issue.

The other thing is that Google may return results that point to the main website and the website redirects to a mobile website. As you never visited the main site the history items won't match and thus the link won't get colored.

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Yes @ljzim website can control them, by serving different code for devices, as @kbrosnan said.

Web site can get the details like screen res, user agent and more info when the browser requests for the first time.

Old browsers dosen't support PSUDO class so they display different color if they are assigned by the make or else not what ever the CSS may be defined it won't work.


May be try some other website, which has a different color for links.

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I have a fairly mundane setup that must be typical of hundreds of thousands cell phone users (Galaxy S4.) When I use Firefox and Dolphin (Android user agent, again, as opposed to Dolphin Desktop user agent), fairly popular browsers, the search results links, after clicking on them, do not change color. If the behavior is as you described, controlled by websites, won't the hundreds of thousands others with my setup have the same experience? I would think that if they did, you'd see more complaints and comments about this problem. But i guess you're right. The others don't care when they look back at their search results and can't tell which links they've viewed and which ones they haven't.

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We noticed today that our links no longer change color when visited - no worries...

We opened Firefox Options then clicked the Privacy tab then set the History dropdown to "Remember History". When we change the dropdown to "Use custom settings for history" and uncheck "Remember my browsing and download history" - poof - no more color change for visited links.

All's well - visited links now change color according to our CSS. This is not a problem with Firefox. Users simply need to make appropriate Browser settings.

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jenf, I have a feeling your suggestions apply to the Desktop version of Firefox and not to the Android/Mobile version, which is the subject of this thread. If I am incorrect, please explain how I can get to "Options," which does not appear to be a choice in the mobile version. Thanks.

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Hi jenf, that's a good reference for users of desktop versions of Firefox.

Hi ljzim, I think this is related to a difference in the result URLs served to Firefox desktop vs. Firefox mobile. The "normal" results page has the "true" link on the result. When you click the link, a script redirects the results through Google's exit page. In the results page served to Firefox on Android, either in Mobile or in Classic mode, the links are coded with the exit url instead of the true destination. Firefox doesn't mark those as visited because apparently Firefox is not storing the exit URL in history.

To see what I mean by "exit URL", long press a result on Firefox for Android and look at the URL in the menu that pops up. (If you want to see the links in the source code of the page, tap the address bar, move the insertion point all the way to the beginning, and type view-source: before HTTPS and then tap the Go button or Enter key. The result links are in the <h3> tags.)

When I compare the stock Android browser on HTC/Gingerbread, I do see previously visited links reflected. Perhaps it is storing the intermediate page in history? The URLs are somewhat different (I have removed some of the values in case they leak private data):

Stock browser:

http://www.google.com/url?
sa=t&
source=web&
cd=9&
ved=9characters&
url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.m.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FFirefox&
ei=longvalue&
usg=longvalue

Firefox for Android (mobile results page):

https://www.google.com/url?
q=http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox&
sa=U&
ei=longvalue&
ved=9characters&
usg=longvalue

Don't ask me to decode that...


Some other search engines, such as startpage.com, do not use exit URLs (they do not track) so there you can immediately see the usual distinction between visited and unvisited sites. Since they get their data from Google, it might be a good choice if no other solution is found.

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