Standard Mischief

I talked about using the rel=”nofollow” tag yesterday, here’s how I know some of you weren’t using it. It’s a simple Cascading Style Sheet trick (css), an this trick is for Firefox Only. I’ve just started schooling myself on CSS but I think the tags are just instructions to your browser on how to render things. Anyway, not important.

If you want to see the rel=”nofollow” tags when you are browsing, all you have to do is drop a few lines in your UserContent.css. If you have a stock install, you probably don’t have that file yet, so you can created it using notepad or something. If you have the file, you can add the lines to your existing file.

This page: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder tells me that for most users with MS windows XP or 2k, the file in question should be in:

C:\Documents and Settings\[Windows login/user name]\Application Data\Mozilla\Profiles\[Profile name]\chrome\

for Linux:

/home/[username]/.mozilla/firefox/[profile-name].default/chrome

Mac:

/home/[username]/Library/Mozilla/Profiles/[Profile name]/

I don’t have a Mac or a MS Windows box around to double check this, tell me if I messed up, please.

Again, unless someone has been tuning your install, you probably don’t have a file called UserContent.css yet.

Using notepad or something, create a file called UserContent.css in the proper directory. Add theses two lines to the blank file you created:

/* distinctly shows rel=nofollow links */
a[rel~=nofollow] { color: yellow !important; background: black !important; }

(yup, that’s only 2 lines of code, and one is a comment. If you already had a UserContent.css file, just add those two lines in at the end)

That’s it. Important! Save the file and restart Firefox. This is what it will look like:

(Click on the picture for higher-rez picture (61 KB), as a pop-up if you allow javascript)

This is a screen shot of this page. The first Gun Guys link (yellow text on black) goes to the Gun Guys website and has the rel=”nofollow” tag. The second link looks normal, and does not have the tag, but points to TheHighRoad web forum.

You can see the comment Sebastian left too. The link to his webpage is a rel=”no follow” one by default.

If you ever get sick of it, you either delete the file and restart (if you created it) or just edit out those two lines if you added them to an existing file.

Related Tags: stupid CSS tricks, rel=”nofollow”, Cascading Style Sheet