271178 - visited links do not change color at all

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Settings UI, defect)

Description

[jost thias]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0

 Whenever I choose "edit" > "preferences" > "fonts & colors", then either
checkmark "colors" under "Always use my:" or leave the box unchecked, the
visited links always remain the same color as unvisited links when I surf the
web and go to visited links by whatever means (back button, exit and restart
browswer, follow a series of links back to original link, etc.).


Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.Open Browser
2.Under "edit" pull-down menu, select "preferences"
3.Click on "fonts & colors" button
4.Select "colors" next to "always use my:" or do not select it (leave it
unchecked).  In either case (aways-use-my-colors:-box with or without
checkmark), the bug is the same.
7. Surf the web with either use-defined or default colors for visited links and
note that visited links will always be the same color as unvisited links.

Actual Results:  
Same as always...no change in visited links' color from unvisited links.

Expected Results:  
That an unvisted link changes color once it has been visited.

Comment 1

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

This worksforme in both Mozilla 1.7 and current trunk Mozilla builds, so it
sounds like a bug in Firefox's pref panel... does it reset the visited color to
be the same as the link color, maybe?

Comment 2

[OstGote!]

Is your history set to 0 days in the options? If so, then this bug is a
duplicate of bug 251203.

Comment 3

[Simon Fraser [no longer active]]

*** Bug 274734 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 4

[Simon Fraser [no longer active]]

*** Bug 278606 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 5

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

Confirming based on dups.  See comment 1, though, so I'm not sure who would be a
good person to get traction on this...

Comment 6

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

I can repro this iff I set history to 0 days --otherwise this w4m.

for the case of history set to 0 days, I think this is expected behavior --see
bug 251203-- since history is effectively disabled.

Comment 7

[Jeff]

(In reply to comment #6)
> I can repro this iff I set history to 0 days --otherwise this w4m.
> 
> for the case of history set to 0 days, I think this is expected behavior --see
> bug 251203-- since history is effectively disabled.

(In reply to comment #6)
> I can repro this iff I set history to 0 days --otherwise this w4m.
> 
> for the case of history set to 0 days, I think this is expected behavior --see
> bug 251203-- since history is effectively disabled.

I disagree.  Most of us are probably migrating from IE, and are used to the days
history referring to the history in the address bar.  If the user is worried
about his entire trail of visited links being compromised, then he should choose
NOT to highlight visited links in the first place.  Alternatively, a new pref
should be added regarding whether/not visited links are cleared when the history
list is cleared.  But I believe default behavior should be to separate the two.

Comment 8

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

History in the URL bar is separate from visiting link coloring already, in the
implementation.  There just seems to be no user interface to control it at the
moment.

Comment 9

[mark J hill]

This has to be a cache bug

Comment 10

[mark J hill]

If the history is set to 0 days my links dont change color at all- even on reload.
If I do have days set (to 5 or whatever) upon reload they do change color otherwise they dont. simple question why?  The history should be updated immediately upon clicking a link like in IE- this is why IE has 70% of the market.   
These seemingly little bugs need to be fixed before trying to add bells and whistles like composer. This is how Netscape lost their market share and are in the 2% range now. They failed to keep up with properly displaying CSS. People are very impatient- they just move on- youve got 7 seconds if its not working thats it. It has to work. 

Comment 11

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

Mark, I suggest using something like a recent build, in which you don't have to reload to get the link color to change.

Comment 12

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

sorry for bugspam, long-overdue mass reassign of ancient QA contact bugs,
filter on "beltznerLovesGoats" to get rid of this mass change

Comment 13

[Nik Wegner]

>for the case of history set to 0 days, I think this is expected behavior

Maybe the 0-day setting should be 'until I close FireFox' instead. That would be pretty consistent with other such features, and the visited color would still work.

Comment 14

[Sarah Cartwright]

I've got my history set to 50 days.

Pulling up a list of Google results (say "Test" for example), and middle clicking through a page of them used to turn the clicked links immediately purple.

In my beta browser, Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.9.1b3) Gecko/20090305 Firefox/3.1b3 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729) , the links don't change colour until I refresh the page, or close and open it again.