The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.
Problem resolved. The link color now depends on which theme the user uses.
It appears that a minor edit war has broken out over the color of a fake red link. I'm guessing the issue is whether a fake red link should match the color of an actual red link, or have a slightly different color to denote that it is not an actual red link. From the template's history, it has had the following colors at some point:
- Fake red link (color: #ba0000, color of an actual red link)
- Fake red link (color: red)
- Fake red link (color: #E34234)
- Fake red link (color: #ff7f7f)
For reference, it appears that Wikipedia uses the color of an actual red link for their version of the template, not that we have to copy them. I personally don't mind a slight color variation to denote fake red links, but since I don't use fake red links that often, I'm not sure how much practical value a color variation adds. Thoughts? Rampage455 (talk) 16:17, 5 March 2025 (UTC)
- Fake red links are meant to look exactly like an actual red link. They're used for talk page proposals to create a page, so once it's created, the link is still red, to show future readers of that section what the user meant back then. I think 245e is using a different skin or has something in their common.css, because my red links are of #ba0000. Here's what I mean: Image --MinecraftExp123(talk|contribs) 23:39, 5 March 2025 (UTC)
- red links are #ba0000 in light mode and #ffa4a4 in dark mode. If same appearance as an actual red link is desired, clearly this template needs to respect the theme and not just set a specific color. -- jacobsjo (talk) 00:04, 6 March 2025 (UTC)
- Oh, I didn't think of that. I think MediaWiki has a way to detect the theme, I'm not sure though. --MinecraftExp123(talk|contribs) 00:23, 6 March 2025 (UTC)
- Real read links have the “new” class applied to them... but it’s applied directly to the <a> element, which can’t be used directly. I agree that the color should be set via CSS classes, this is a no-brainer actually. BabylonAS 13:53, 6 March 2025 (UTC)
- For what it's worth, I'm not a fan of having fake links that look identical to regular links (whether blue or red). If it looks like a link, I expect it to be a link and work like a link.--Capopanzo (talk | contribs) 00:25, 6 March 2025 (UTC)
- it is a link, it works like a link, it just doesn't show up in Special:WantedPages. -- 👁 Image
MarkusRost (talk) 13:50, 6 March 2025 (UTC)
- My bad, I was thinking of other wikis that have fake links that look like links and are clickable, but clicking on them does nothing. I should have checked the mcw implementation haha--Capopanzo (talk | contribs) 15:05, 6 March 2025 (UTC)
- This would be a lot easier if we had the link colors based on css variables. This is planned but requires to rework a lot of our css. For now I've added light-dark() to switch between the link colors based on the current theme. This is a fairly new css feature, so I've kept the light theme color as a fallback in case the function isn't supported by a readers browser. -- 👁 Image
MarkusRost (talk) 13:55, 6 March 2025 (UTC)
- [late to discussion] I'd prefer a slight difference from the actual red links, but that's just me really. -~- Nerdyguy2000 Talk Edits 14:44, 25 March 2025 (UTC)
The above discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.
User:MinecraftExp123 has recently reverted two edits made by this account to this template. One is a minor edit that should not change particularly much, but the other is a rewrite of the template. Hence the question: why revert this rewrite? It is unadressed in the edit summary (only the minor edit is adressed), so is it possibly on accident? Have any issues been caused by the rewrite itself?
The reasoning for keeping the rewrite comes down to ease of editing, accuracy to real red links (see earlier discussion), and accessibility to earlier browsers. Of course, these are irrelevant if significant issues have been introduced by it, but they may be more relevant if the rollback is for another reason. ...So says the construct. (It/its.) 13:05, 16 February 2026 (UTC)
- Yeah, it was on accident. I fixed it. However, could you explain basically what the rewrite does? ‑‑MinecraftExp123(talk|contribs) 13:35, 16 February 2026 (UTC)
- Well, there are a few things the rewrite establishes.
- Specifically in the dark theme, the color of either type of link (blue or red) depends on whether the link is being hovered or not, with the hovered variants being slightly darker (but not as dark as those in the light theme). A table with the specific color values is available here. Previously, fake red links did not emulate this; after the rewrite, they do.
- Another feature that has only since recently been emulated is the hover text. It now says "Page name (page does not exist)", again, the same as real red links.
- This emulation of hover colors required TemplateStyles, which, in turn, made another issue apparent: in case the default colors change, the styles of countless templates would have to be edited accordingly. Using the same
styles.css as another template would not solve this, but would be a step in the right direction. The core of the template was then rewritten to match and not interfere with those CSS rules, as this was difficult to achieve with a {{Colorlink}} call. The resulting HTML is still based on code from the Colorlink template, but modified, which is why it no longer calls it.
- Coincidentally, utilizing TemplateStyles means the template no longer uses the newly-available
light-dark() selector, so it should now pick the correct color even on older browsers. ...So says the construct. (It/its.) 15:45, 16 February 2026 (UTC)
