More Purple Links, Please

While I am browsing the Web, one thing I always like to see is a page with purple links. Since the early days of the Web, purple has has become the default colour for visited links. Here's a relevant note from the changelog of NCSA Mosaic 0.13 (1993):

Changed default anchor representations: blue and single solid underline for unvisited, dark purple and single dashed underline for visited.

Visiting a web page and finding purple links brings a sense of ease. The purple links indicate that I am familiar with some of the references the web page makes to other articles. Each purple link serves as a small marker of a prior journey, a reminder that I've explored certain paths before. Purple links are like well-worn books. They show signs of use: faded covers, creased spines, and dog-eared pages. Blue links, on the other hand, are like new books, still unopened and waiting to be explored.

Although I'm quite fond of purple links, I know that not everyone shares this sentiment. Modern web design trends have moved away from this tradition, favouring sleek, minimalist aesthetics where visited and unvisisted links look nearly the same, or even using custom colours for visited links. While this can be visually appealing, it subtracts from the experience of using the Web as a source of knowledge. When links look indistinguishable or unconventional, it can be hard to tell what I've already read, especially when I am revisiting a topic and want to easily spot the links that are new.

Now it is not hard to change the visited link style with a little userscript. For example the following userscript can override the website's stylesheet to colour visited links purple again:

// ==UserScript==
// @name Purple Links
// @match *://*/*
// ==/UserScript==
document.head.appendChild(document.createElement('style'))
document.head.lastElementChild.innerHTML = 'a:visited {color: #518}'

This little userscript should work well on most web pages with light backgrounds. But if a web page uses a dark theme or a custom colour scheme, then the above userscript may need adjustments to either handle other colour schemes gracefully.

In the end, sticking with the default purple for visited links isn't just about tradition; it is about simplicity and clarity. It is a small but reliable visual cue that makes navigating the Web easier and more intuitive, for me, at least. For me, those purple links bring comfort. They are small reminders of all the digital paths I've already walked. I wish more websites would keep them that way. More purple links, please.