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Links Break in Gmail After Semicolon

Started by pftq, January 20, 2011, 02:25:23 AM

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pftq

I searched and found a number of mentions of this problem but the topics have all ended rather inconclusively.

Basically, if someone uses IE to access gmail, the links from SMF all end at the semicolon.
Something such as:
forums/index.php?topic=505.msg1203;boardseen#new

becomes:
forums/index.php?topic=505.msg1203

This isn't always a big deal but makes it impossible to recover passwords if the user is not aware of the URL change.

I can probably modify the URLs to use & instead of semicolons, but lately I've been trying to avoid modifying files directly.  I was wondering if there's any official workaround for this problem or if SMF intends to address it in maybe the next patch or so.

Illori

this only happens in IE? then tell your users to use a better browser.

Arantor

QuoteI was wondering if there's any official workaround for this problem or if SMF intends to address it in maybe the next patch or so.

I can't see SMF rewriting every single link in its system to not use ; especially since it's a perfectly legal URL separator, so don't expect there to be a patch for this - the issue is with GMail, not SMF.

pftq

Okay then - I was just wondering about that incase something was going to be done about it.

What I'm doing for now is editing the sendmail function so that it regex replaces the URL semicolons with &s for now.

Quotethis only happens in IE? then tell your users to use a better browser.

I wish I *could* tell all users to get a better browser. :P However, a lot of the times, if they can't even get past the activation process, they just blame the website instead.

Arantor

QuoteOkay then - I was just wondering about that incase something was going to be done about it.

The number of changes there would be, not to mention the number of sites whose search engine presence would disappear almost immediately... it's really not a good idea.

QuoteWhat I'm doing for now is editing the sendmail function so that it regex replaces the URL semicolons with &s for now.

That's certainly workable.

Does it only happen in IE though? If it's in GMail, one assumes it would be all browsers consistently?

Illori

it is not consistent it works fine in firefox for example when linked from gmail, i believe also works fine in opera.

pftq

Yes it seems to only be an issue in IE and Gmail - not sure why.

Arantor

See, I was operating under the logical assumption that it was GMail, and that GMail was operating consistently across browsers.

In this case I'd *definitely* be chalking this up to GMail to fix...

pftq

Yes, definitely I agree with that.  Unfortunately when I looked up the issue it seems to have been around for a while and the last thing I can do is ask my users to abandon gmail. -_-

Arantor

No, but you can tell your users to complain to GMail in the hope that GMail will fix it for everyone :)

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