How to change link color when clicked?

Question

:active changes the color but only while the user is still holding down the mouse.

for example:

black (click) > blue (release) > black

Instead, I need:

black (click) > blue (release) > blue

Is there a way to do this with CSS? Edit: I should mention that I don't want the browser to style visited links, so I can't use :visited.

Answer 1

You could use a combination of the tabindex attribute and :focus selector to your anchor elements.

http://jsfiddle.net/dcNzt/

HTML

<a href="#" tabindex="1">Stays blue</a>

CSS

a {   
    color: black;   
}

a:active {
    color: blue;
}

a[tabindex]:focus {
    color:blue;
    outline: none;
}

Answer 2

Use :visited to set the color of links that have been visited.