CSS link visited underline style not working on Safari

Osiyo wrote:

COULD THERE BE A GLOBAL DEVELOPER CONUNDRUM, where the text decoration syntax for the link element 'a' is established, but the browser behavior (s) do not yet fit?

It's been this way since the World Wide Web was first created. Every web browser has quirks. If you are committed to publishing a website the relies on something that doesn't have good cross-platform support, it is your responsibility to add the required hacks to your site.

This is the way it has always been.

This will never change.

:visited can’t alter the “style”, per

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/:visited

and

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/Privacy_and_the_:visited_selector

That should apply to any modern browser.

Osiyo wrote:

I am publishing a large legal document with many links. So a:visited and specifically text-decoration-style is very important. And must suit specific cultural perspectives. Can we hack that?

Use PDF for more complete control of rendering.

Otherwise, you’re going to have to tussle with every web browser, and with how that particular browser renders your content over different versions, and with how the particular user has configured the browser, and with privacy. Since its inception, designers have been trying to exert control over page rendering, and getting frustrated with that effort as HTML and web browsers generally gave that control (and gave it differently) to different browsers and to browser users.

Per the Safari footnotes in the CSS referendes, wavy requires Safari 12.1 (Released 2019-03-25):

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/text-decoration-style

As Urquhart1244 mentions, the visited rendering is further limited: “For privacy reasons, browsers strictly limit which styles you can apply using this pseudo-class, and how they can be used:” “Allowable CSS properties are color, background-color, border-color, border-bottom-color, border-left-color, border-right-color, border-top-color, column-rule-color, outline-color, text-decoration-color, and text-emphasis-color.” Wavy isn’t included there.

Based on that last bit of documentation and on Apple’s general privacy proclivities, and on your page-rendering preferences, you’re seemingly headed for PDF here, and not toward CSS here. Privacy? Yes, I know of web sites that do take different actions based on the visited state of site-unrelated links. There was a recent kerfuffle about exactly that among some netizens, too.

Osiyo wrote:

etresoft wrote "hacks to your site"?

Apple's Safari web browser is not mine in any way.

That's why I said "your site" and not "the web browser you are using".

Today the visited links specification includes very common styling for element 'a' and very common styling for pseudo element 'a:visited'. Color remains very popular, though text decoration is often found in publishing, library, education and large corporations.

I am publishing a large legal document with many links. So a:visited and specifically text-decoration-style are very important! And must suit specific cultural perspectives, norms even. We can 'hack' that?

Anything can be hacked. Hence the word.

It is a bummer perhaps, that writing on an Apple mac one has no desktop author software preview of what the heck the online visited links look like, without guessing or wasting time and space running additional software, connections and security. Did I miss something?

See Urquhart1244's post above. Personally, I think that is a silly restriction since colour is still allowed. But maybe the window.getComputedStyle hacks that. But hacks are hacks. There's always a way to do it. I'm sure these restrictions are targeted towards malicious activity like malware injection. If this is your site, you should be able to hack it up to display the links however you want. You might need to get creative about it, however. And the effort may be more than is really worth.

Apple may or may not read postings and enhancement requests here.

You will want to send your suggestions directly.

To do that: Product Feedback - Apple