168775 - a:hover works on anchors, too

Status: VERIFIED INVALID

(SeaMonkey :: General, defect)

Description

[Heinz Harald]

while designing a webpage I noticed that, with Mozilla, the pseudoclass ":hover"
is assigned to anchors. Therefore, my headline becomes small and underlined
while hovering over it. :)

Comment 1

[Adam Hauner]

IMHO INVALID, because if you have in style definition line like this:

   A:hover  {font-size:12px;text-decoration:underline}

Mozilla is just doing what you want.

Maybe construction like this should help you:
<H2><A NAME="fooname"></A>My Headline</H2>

Comment 2

[David Tenser [:djst]]

":hover" is, and should be assigned to any <a> tag, regardless of what
properties they contain.

Reporter, change your site as Adam suggests. Marking this bug as INVALID.

Comment 3

[Niklas Dougherty]

Just adding my .02 euro. Use

:link {...}
:link:hover {...}
:link:active {...}
:link:active:hover {...}
:visited {...}
:visited:hover {...}
:visited:active {...}
:vistied:active:hover {...}

and leave the <a> element alone. Or use the above statements with the "a"
prepended for clarity (i.e., a:link:hover). The point is that you should only
define style for links, not for anchors per se. Occasionally, you might want to
define a style for anchors that are not links, because they are usually invisble.

This presents a problem for developers used to only consider the <a> element,
but I think there are few FAQs around on the matter.

Comment 4

[Mats Palmgren (inactive)]

See also http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~dbaron/css/1999/09/links

Verified Invalid

Comment 5

[Jesse Ruderman]

Related: bug 127468, :hover applies to non-link elements.  (Also invalid)