Why do we need "a:link"? Why not just "a"?

Question

It seems the following variants produce identical results:

/* 1 */ a, a:visited, a:active { color: black; } a:hover { color: red; }  /* 2 */ a, a:link, a:visited, a:active { color: black; } a:hover { color: red; }  /* 3 */ a:link, a:visited, a:active { color: black; } a:hover { color: red; } 

Most guidance on the web uses 2 or 3. Why not go for the simplest variant which is 1? I cannot find a good reason to ever apply :link if all you need is one style for normal links and one for hover.

Is it best-practice to not use :link? Why or why not?

I don't care whether the link is visited or not. Both receive the same style. I only care about hover or not hover. This question is not about what the variants do - all do the same thing. It is about what the best variant is. Is one of the variants faulty? Which one is best-practice?

Answer 1

Because not every a is a link.

<a name="table_of_contents">Table of Contents</a> 

isn't a link, it's an anchor that can be linked to with <a href="#table_of_contents">.

a will match it, a:link won't.

Answer 2

It is used to differentiate between simple anchors and anchors with href attributes. See demo jsfiddle here.

<style> a { color: red; } a:link { color: blue; } </style> <a name="anchor">No href</a><br /> <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/">With href</a> 

EDIT: For this reason, it is important to cover all cases in your CSS. Option 2 is the only option that completely covers all cases. If you do not have anchor elements without href attributes, you are safe with option 1.