Comments on: Download link warning icon needed

By: niko

niko — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 14:41:56 +0000

The problem comes with URLs where “something.pdf” is included in the last parameter name, for example: http://www.url.com/something.php?param=moreSomething.pdf

I made it a:hover so I get warned when I’m about to click the link.

By: Visa

Visa — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 14:36:11 +0000

Oh, and make it a[href=...] instead of a:link[href=...]. Otherwise you lose your styling after visiting the link.

By: Visa

Visa — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 14:30:22 +0000

How about this:

a:link[href*=".pdf?"], a:link[href$=".pdf"] { ... }

By: niko

niko — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 12:58:27 +0000

So now all I need is a rule that says "select all elements that include string .pdf after the first / character and before the first encountered ? character, and I'm all set. ;)

By: Visa

Visa — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 12:08:37 +0000

XML.com has a tutorial on CSS3 selectors. There you can learn that instead of using a:link[href*=".zip"] like in my example, you can also use a:link[href$=".zip"] which will only match URLs that end with ".zip".

By: Visa

Visa — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 10:21:59 +0000

That would only work if the URL has a file extension. However, this is not always the case.

And anyway, it can't be done with a basic CSS hack since it can't be determined in CSS which files are downloaded to the disk and which are displayed in the browser. For example, PDFs are displayed in the browser if you have installed a PDF plugin and downloaded if you haven't.

There are ways to change the link's appearance by its URL. See an example at http://www.visakopu.net/misc/css/url_icon/. Works at least in Safari and Firefox.