New default link colour in Vista?

Awful pale blue shade in IE but not in FF

[thord]

When visiting my own pages online with Vista and IE 7 I noticed with disgust that the colour of unvisited links had changed from the standard dark blue to a shade between pale and light. I usually do not define my own link colours, as the old defaults had suited my preferences well.

The new RGB values are Hex 00 66 CC or Dec 0 102 204. The old were Hex 00 00 FF, Dec 0 0 255. The link colours can be changed in IE by the user under Options, Appearence, Colors. However, the default is: "Use Windows colors". If that is unchecked the old blue is offered as the first alternative for unvisited links, but I am sure that very few of my visitors are going to override IE/Window's default or CSS governed colours.

This link colour is correct in XP + IE 7 and in Vista + FF. If everybody else is seeing the same I guess I have no choice but recode all my pages where link colours are undefined. Visited links are still purple.

[jalarie]

Is this a time for CSS?

[Robin_reala]

Yep, CSS will help you here. These are the default colours for Firefox (on XP at least):

a { color: #00f; }
a:visited { color: #800080; }
a:active { color :#e00; }

[thord]

I will certainly add CSS even to those simple pages that otherwise would not have needed it, if this Vista change is universal and not just in my PC. (I have not altered these MS defaults.) Is nobody else seeing any differences when using Vista + IE7? So far only 0.5 pct of my sites' visitors have Vista + IE7, but I would presume webdesigners are testing it. Nothing special noted?

Here on WebmasterWorld there is no difference between unvisited and visited links anymore; not even a dotted border. When I return from a thread to the forum page it is hard to find the last read subject, in order to read the next. The on-screen Arial is not the same cut as before. It looks somehow modernised, and it is not bad. Maybe the new font look is due to my new monitor resolution.