“text-decoration” and the “:after” pseudo-element, revisited

Question

I'm re-asking this question because its answers didn't work in my case.

In my stylesheet for printed media I want to append the url after every link using the :after pseudo-class.

a:after {
    content: " <" attr(href) ">";
    text-decoration: none;
    color: #000000;
}

In Firefox (and probably Chrome but not IE8), text-decoration: none is ignored, and the underline stretches unattractively across the bottom of the url. The color however is correctly set to black for the url. Is there a way to make the text-decoration work?

The original question appended fixed size images instead of variable width text. Its answers use padding and background images to avoid having to use the text-decoration property. I'm still looking for a solution when the content is variable width text.

Answer 1

If you use display: inline-block on the :after pseudo, the text-decoration declaration will work.

Tested in Chrome 25, Firefox 19

Answer 2

IE8's implementation of the :before and :after pseudo-elements is incorrect. Firefox, Chrome and Safari all implement it according to the CSS 2.1 specification.

5.12.3 The :before and :after pseudo-elements

The ':before' and ':after' pseudo-elements can be used to insert generated content before or after an element's content. They are explained in the section on generated text.

...

Cascading Style Sheets Level 2 Revision 1 (CSS 2.1) Specification

The specification indicates that the content should be inserted before or after the element's content, not the element (i.e. <element>content:before content content:after</element>). Thus in Firefox and Chrome the text-decoration you're encountering is not on the inserted content but rather on the parent anchor element that contains the inserted content.

I think your options are going to be using the background-image/padding technique suggested in your previous question or possibly wrapping your anchor elements in span elements and applying the pseudo-elements to the span elements instead.

Answer 3

I had the same problem and my solution was to set height and overflow:hidden

http://jsfiddle.net/r45L7/

a {
    text-decoration: underline;
}

a:after {
    content: "»";
    display: inline-block;
    text-decoration: none;
    height:16px;
    overflow: hidden;
    padding-left: 10px;
}

It works on IE, FF, Chrome.

Answer 4

As an alternative, you can use a bottom border rather than a text-decoration. This assumes that you know the color of the background

a {
  text-decoration: none;
  border-bottom: 1px solid blue;
}
a:after {
  content: "foo";
  border-bottom: 1px solid white; /* same color as the background */
}