New YouTube design – No Visited Link Colors

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Hello,

I am having an issue when using the Seamonkey browser (latest version 2.49.4) with YouTube.

At first my problem was, in default view, the video had a very wide left black border that caused the video window to partially overlay the first three related videos on the right.

Whenever I’ve had YouTube display problems in the past, I’ve been able to fix them by deleting YouTube cookies.  I did this in Seamonkey, and now a new YouTube design/layout appears.  Deleting the cookies did fix my issue with the video window “stepping on” related videos to the right in default mode.

However, now I have a new problem.  All related video links have black text, whether I’ve previously watched that video or not.  In other words, there is no discernible difference between visited and unvisited video links.

Since I often rely on the related videos on the right to find new content, the inability to see which videos I’ve already watched is a problem.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how I can get visited YouTube links to appear in Seamonkey?  I am running the NoScript add-on, and have tried enabling all the various Google sites, but that doesn’t seem to make any difference.

I am running Windows 7 x64.  The only other browser I have installed on this system is IE 11 and I have that set up to delete browsing history on exit.  BTW, IE 11 seems to have both the old and new problems.

Thanks!

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This can be fixed pretty easily!

Start Seamonkey, and type about:profiles into the URL bar.  Below you will see your user profile(s).  If you have more than one, it will be the one that says “This is the profile in use and it cannot be deleted.”  Press the Open Directory button for the root directory (it says which one to the left of the button), then look for the folder “chrome”.  It should be there, but if not, create it by right-clicking the background and selecting Create new folder, then type “chrome” into the name field.  (Sorry if I am oversimplifying; I don’t know how much you know).

This has nothing to do with Google Chrome, in case you were wondering.  “Chrome” is programmer’s jargon for decoration added to a program… it can be things that make it look more polished and professional, or it can be excessive or gaudy.  That’s what Mozilla was getting at when they named the directory, years before Google had a browser named the same thing.

Double click the folder to enter it, then right-click the background and select the option to create a new text file.  Name it “userContent.css”, then tell Windows it’s really okay to change a file extension.  If the file already exists, there’s no need to create it.

Double click the new (or not) file to open it in notepad, then cut and paste this bit (the five lines from @ to } ) into the file:

@-moz-document url-prefix(“https://www.youtube.com”) {
:visited {
color: red !important;
}
}

Change the color to whatever you want if you don’t like red… it can be any of the standard named colors or a hex color code like #abac3a.  Save the file, and you are done.  You will probably need to restart Seamonkey before it takes effect, but once you do, it should start making your visited links the color specified.

If you want all the links to use your chosen color, not just the youtube ones, you can just go to the preferences menu and set your link color and visited link color, then check the box to override the web page colors with your own colors.  I used to always use that mode way back when I used Mozilla Suite (the predecessor of Seamonkey), but it didn’t work with some pages (if you set the link color to the same color as the page, you won’t be able to see it, for example), so I began to use an addon to switch my colors on and off.  I use one called “Monochro” now… it’s a very small addon that simply gives you an icon to switch the option from “use the web page colors” to “use my colors” without having to dig through the preference menu each time.  It’s one of the essential addons I won’t do without.

I don’t know if it works with Seamonkey, but it probably does.  If not, I am sure there is one that does somewhere.

 

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)

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Ascaris wrote:

I began to use an addon to switch my colors on and off. I use one called “Monochro” now… it’s a very small addon that simply gives you an icon to switch the option from “use the web page colors” to “use my colors” without having to dig through the preference menu each time. It’s one of the essential addons I won’t do without. I don’t know if it works with Seamonkey, but it probably does. If not, I am sure there is one that does somewhere.

First of all, thanks Ascaris. I didn’t expect such a detailed reply and so quickly!

Your instructions on how to create userContent.css were great, however it didn’t seem to change the YouTube visited link color.

However, you got me looking for add-on. “Monochro” doesn’t work with Seamonkey, but I found another add-on that does: Page Colors & Fonts Buttons. It does just what you describe, lets you add a button to toggle between default colors and the web page colors. This add-on does change the YouTube link colors and the results are both attractive and functional. Thanks!

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Glad it helped, Alpha128!

As for the userContent.css: It didn’t work at first for me in the Seamonkey I had in my Windows 7 VM either.  When I switched on the option to override web page colors, it started using my userContent.css link color rather than the one specified in the Seamonkey options.  Then I set the option back to “use page colors except with high contrast themes,” the default option, and it kept using my userContent.css color.

I was having some trouble with the VM at the time (it was running a lot slower than it has in the past), so I thought the lag in displaying the color may have been because of that, but apparently, Seamonkey handles something about parsing the user .CSS files differently than Firefox/Waterfox.  I tried it in Waterfox and it immediately worked, and that’s been how such changes have worked with recent Firefox releases too (I didn’t test it for this specifically, but I’ve tested with other very similar things recently).  Edit: I was incorrect about the parts now marked with a strikethrough… see my followup post below.

There is also the option of using an addon like Stylus (previously, I’ve used Stylish, but it’s been bought and repurposed into a data slurping tool, so bah) to restyle web pages as you see fit.  Often someone has already done the work of writing the user stylesheet (if you are having a given problem with a site, chances are lots of other people are too) and all you need to do is install it from a user CSS site (instructions should come with the addon).  That’s if these addons work with Seamonkey, of course.

If you’re happy with what you have (I do the same thing to be able to see visited Youtube links… this trend of hiding them just to pretty up the page is really dumb), then you need look no further, but you should know some of the other options out there before you decide.

 

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)

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Ascaris wrote:

Glad it helped, Alpha128! As for the userContent.css: It didn’t work at first for me in the Seamonkey I had in my Windows 7 VM either.

If you’re happy with what you have (I do the same thing to be able to see visited Youtube links… this trend of hiding them just to pretty up the page is really dumb), then you need look no further, but you should know some of the other options out there before you decide.

So far, I’m pretty satisfied with the Add-on I installed.  The one-click button is convenient. Furthermore, YouTube actually works better than before.  Previously links on the home page were always black, and I had to hover my mouse pointer over a related link to see if I had watched the video before.

Thanks again.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Ascaris

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Hmm… I guess I was wrong when I said that Seamonkey handles the userContent.css a little differently than Waterfox.  I just tried setting the preference I listed above, and it behaved the same way in WF as it had in Seamonkey.  It worked immediately when I tried it previously, but I don’t remember the precise details of what I did to test it.

I just wanted anyone who may read this later to be aware of the correction!

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)

1 user thanked author for this post.

Elly

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Alpha128 #211290 : Did not know about it, so I just looked up “SeaMonkey” on the Web. It looks interesting: a combination of browser, email client and etc., etc. that is also (I guess) a fork of FireFox, or a development parallel to that of Mozilla’s FF and starting from the same origins. There is a Mac version as well (and an “intelligent” SeaMonkey Download page that figured out I was accessing it with a Mac, so it offered SeaMonkey for the Mac!)

My thanks to you and Ascaris for this informative thread.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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OscarCP wrote:

Alpha128 #211290 : Did not know about it, so I just looked up “SeaMonkey” on the Web. It looks interesting: a combination of browser, email client and etc., etc. that is also (I guess) a fork of FireFox, or a development parallel to that of Mozilla’s FF and starting from the same origins. There is a Mac version as well (and an “intelligent” SeaMonkey Download page that figured out I was accessing it with a Mac, so it offered SeaMonkey for the Mac!) My thanks to you and Ascaris for this informative thread.

You’re welcome.

Seamonkey is my favorite browser.  It’s a basically a combination of Firefox and Thunderbird.  I live in my browser, so it’s great to have one that includes an email client.  And with the calendar add-on Lightning, by the Mozilla Calendar Project, the Seamonkey email client provides all the basic functionality of Microsoft Outlook.

1 user thanked author for this post.

OscarCP

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