Removing the dotted border on active links in FireFox...

I was involved in a discussion earlier today about the dotted boxes / borders that appear around links in FireFox once clicked. The initial question was how to remove them which simply involves adding a line of code to your CSS similar to this one:

a:focus {outline: none}

However - the topic soon turned to why they were there and should we be removing them. The argument was that they provide accessibilty for user that need it and should not be tampered with. In my eyes removing them is no worse that setting the size of text to a small font - it shouldn't be done but many, many sites do it regardless. Designers should be mindful of usability of their sites as well as the look. 

Comments (2) -

Dave White

Am I right in thinking that the links are visible only in the following circumstances :
1. After clicking a link, but before it loads.
2. After coming back to a referring page and before clicking another link.

If so, who cares really?  The design should go into the a:visited links, not the immediate previous one, right?

Posted on June 23, 2008 12:11 by Dave White

James

You may be right for IE but on Firefox and Safari (I think) you see the dotted border if the link is active (if you are on the page referenced by the link you just clicked).

This is no problem if you are navigating away from a site but if there is a menu throughout a site the link remains 'dotted'. This is the 'issue' as some designers are not happy with the dotted box appearing over theie fancy menu.

You are probably right though - at the end of the day I doubt 99.9% of visitors care! :o)

Posted on June 23, 2008 16:16 by James

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