Hi Robert,
And just for a little geek speak if I may, the term "Active" in the selector class is a bit misleading. It wasn't meant to mean when that page is selected but actually when the link itself is being clicked. I know - a split second of the Active class is what you see. Typically a lot of designers rarely even bothering to set the Active selector and if they do, it is many times set exactly as the hover state.
I typically change the current page link dynamically with PHP code like this:
<a href="home.php" <?php if ($_SERVER['SCRIPT_NAME'] == 'home.php') { echo 'class="current"'; } ?>>home</a>
<a href="about.php" <?php if ($_SERVER['SCRIPT_NAME'] == 'about.php') { echo 'class="current"'; } ?>>about</a>
<a href="contact.php" <?php if ($_SERVER['SCRIPT_NAME'] == 'contact.php') { echo 'class="current"'; } ?>>contact</a>
Then I would put the menu as a standalone file and include it into anything and that way if you need to make changes, you would only have to do it once and republish the menu file.
Then you can set the class "current" to whatever different color you want in your CSS sheet.
Best regards,
Brian