I was recently checking my site traffic reports to see where my visitors were coming from and I found a mind-blowing (at least for me) CSS technique for visited links. Eva-Lotta Lam uses a check mark background image for visited links rather than simply changing the text color. You might not think that this is mind-blowing, but consider that using background images to attach information to links has been around for awhile now, i.e. external link icons.
Why has this technique not been applied broadly to visited links as well? It makes so much more sense than changing the color. You don’t have to think about which color corresponds to a visited link as opposed to a non-visited link. The color swapping doesn’t really help across different websites because there is no standard convention for which colors to use. The exception may be blue for non-visited purple for visited, but these are antiquated and clash with most websites’ color schemes. Using a check mark doesn’t require that users remember a link had a different color when or if they re-encounter it after they have visited the it the first time. Users do not have to compare one link’s color to another and try to remember which of those links has been visited and which has not. The check mark conveys the same meaning without requiring the user to think as much; it is a much better solution.
Evalotta pointed out that Paul Boag also uses this technique. If you know of any others, let me know.
