Can Links be Underlined Globally?

[mauserme]

In another thread 1st_Moon posted a very common sense suggestion that links embedded within a post be automatically underlined.  This was in response to my difficulty seeing that a link was actually posted.

Is it possible?

[DavidR]

Whilst you can set it up in IE Tools, Internet Options, Advanced, Underline Links (always, hover, never), however,sites can override that option and obviously that doesn't work in other browsers.

[bob3160]

I believe you might be referring to an embedded link something like the following example:
How to post a link (URL)

The person posting the link can manually select the underline formatting option when the embedded link is constructed.
Some of us do that  and some do not. 
I don't know if that is something that can be set board wide.

[mauserme]

... sites can override that option and obviously that doesn't work in other browsers.

Apparently the avast! forum does override this setting - links are not underlined here even in Internet Explorer 6 with settings as you suggest (no I didn't update to IE 7 yet).

I don't know if that is something that can be set board wide.

That's what I'm hoping for, even if its just something I could set in my own profile so other users don't have to see links this way if they don't want to.

[DavidR]

I believe you might be referring to an embedded link something like the following example:
How to post a link (URL)

No that is just a forum setting.

The one in the Internet Options is an Internet wide option if you create a link in a web page, you don't put any underline in the link but IE would underline it depending on the option.

However that can be overridden by the web page or site using either a css (Cascading Style Sheet) script or hard coded in a page that effects each page or the whole site depending how it is implemented and the Theme probably has an associated style sheet for the layout an effects, etc. and this is possibly where the link effect is set.

Here are just a couple of effects you can apply to a link, the text decoration, relates to the underline, so none disables that. The a:visited is the colour you want applied after you have visited that link. The a:hover changes the text colour, size and background colour of the link text when you hover over it, there is no way you would miss that.

Code: [Select]

<style type="text/css">
<!--
A { text-decoration:none }
a:visited { color: blue }
a:hover { color: yellow;
          font-size: 12pt;
          font-weight: bold;
    text-decoration: bold;
    background-color: black;
  }
-->
</style>

This is the call for a style sheet in the forum home page (and an extract of the css code) so whatever is in that determines what happens, here is where it gets weird, it should underline links:

Code: [Select]

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://forum.avast.com/Themes/ALWIL_default/style.css?rc2" />

[quote]
/*
a:link
{
color: #000000;
text-decoration: underline;
}
a:visited, a:hover
{
color: #323232;
text-decoration: underline;
}
*/[/quote]
Unfortunately it looks like because of the way the forum works, so users don't have to know html to construct a page, different rules are applied to make it easy to post. That would make it necessary to add the underline to the link in order for it to show.

[mauserme]

So is it not possible at all, or only possible if someone from alwil would add the code that you so kindly provided?

[DavidR]

Well at first glance that code is already added, but it clearly isn't working, that's why I said here is where it gets weird, it may simply be because the links on the forums aren't using standard html notation.

A link (with a name) in a regular web page link looks like this:

Code: [Select]

<a href="http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/players.asp">Microsoft
Windows Media Player</a>

This part, <a href=", in a forum link, would be [url="

So in the forum the link code doesn't begin with the <a> tag,  but either no tag, or the [url] forum attribute which isn't an html tag, so the style isn't applied.

[mauserme]

Maybe Igor or someone with the time and ability to make some changes will wander through.

[igor]

I believe the hyperlink styles are part of the forum layout style (the particular layout you are using)... but that's about all I can say. I can't modify any forum properties... and I also don't know anything about its internals, so I don't really want to do that either.

[mauserme]

OK.

Thanks for the response.