Browsers Changing Link Code

[xxxxxx]

Why are some browsers changing link codes, and what can be done to stop this.
From my Flash page I have the code
(I have subsituted domain and page for the actual names, as to the posting agreement of this form)
http://www.domain.com/page.html#ads
But ie, and now opera are chang it to this:
http://www.domain.com/page.html%23ads
Netscape 4.xx still works fine.

Another example is on my Swedish page where these browsers change a Swedish girls name from
http://www.domain.com/directory/directory/Anaïs.html#girl
to
http://www.domain.com/directory/directory/Anaïs.html#girl

I have temporarily fixed the models name by adding a mirrored page by that name, and am working on something simular for the flash transolation. But as forgen submitions are getting more prevelent this problem is only going to get worse. Would apreciat any input on how to tame these browsers.

[hakre]

hi xxxxxxx,

for your second problem you have to find out the correct entity for every letter which is not part of the group of 'normal letters'. for example, if i want to write the german word märz, i have to type in märz in html. this is the same for attribute values in html. all you have to do is to find out, which entity is used for the special letter you're using. your 'special i' for example is ï.

the first problem is not solveable that easy i think. it seems to be the browsers decision to urlencode the # letter instead of leaving it untouched. this might be a bug of the plugin-interface of ie and opera. or it's a bug of the flash plugin these two browsers are using, but i think, opera will use the netscape plugin.

[Grumpus]

#1 is most likely your HTML editor that's making the changes. Some editors look at things two ways - it's it "page text" or "code text". Code text is literal and everything you type shows up the way you type it - which can make it look funny if you really intend to display it on the page. Page text uses character codes to display so that your browser knows it's to be shown rather than be some code telling the browser what to do.

For example, if you use quotes on a page to display something like this:

"My Quoted Text"

... you can then look at the actual HTML code and you'll see this:

"My Quoted Text"

For some reason your HTML editor is looking at the bogus link as "displayed text" rather than "link code". What HTML editor you use will determine how to fix it and see that it doesn't happen again. You can go into the HTML code and fix it by hand, but the next time you load the page and save it again, the editor just might burn you again. Keep an eye on it.

Hope this helps.

G.

[xxxxxx]

Thanks to all, The html editors I use are notepad and recently html kit (which is still text based), although maybe flash changed something, as the # thing is a link within the flash, but untill recently it has not been a problem, it worked fine on the older browsers.
On the other problem, yes ï is ï in the text, but as a link would not the two be treated different? I will have to try it and see how the different browsers react to it. I will let you know.
Thanks for all of your help, Sincerely, jb

[hakre]

to tell the truth (after all the background info i gave to you), i had a similar problem with a link containing a french name. after all i created a linktext for that name, containing only ascii characters, because any url is not allowed to contain these special characters (defined by rfc). now i remember - sorry about this.

so if you want every browser to get your link the right way use only standard characters. some browsers for example interpreted the special characters and some not. and: it also depends on the server, too, how it handles these non-ascii chars in a request. that's all you've to deal with then, so i removed any special character.

[Grumpus]

Yes, but "...html#ads" IS proper for calling an named anchor, so it can't be that the "#" is a bad character to use in HTML - it was designed to use that character...

G.

[xxxxxx]

That makes sence hakre, Hadn't thought of that even though when I am on a Russan or Chinees page I often use the link codes to help figure out what they are saying, because the links are always in english. Boy don't I feel dumb, and I've been beating my head against the wall for 6 months over this. Must be hard to be of another nationality and have to know english just to write a webpage though.
Yes Grumpus # is standard code, but if like you said, flash may have transolated this, thus therein lies the problem. Unfortunatly it is not as easy to see the code in flash as it is in html, so I will have to figure another way to deal with the flash error. Of course the strange part is that versions 5 of both ie and Opera worked with the flash, and Opera worked with the name (ie did not work with the name, but that is the page I use to use to try to get people to leave ie).
Thanks Again, any sugestions on the flash would also be apreciated.

[hakre]

if you're using a swf file in version 5 or lower, open it in a binary viewer or textpad and you'll find the link somewhere in the choas. then you can check it, how it was written in.
if you don't know where to get such a viewer and you're using win32, get totalcommander, move the focus over the .swf file and press F3. there you go ;)

[xxxxxx]

It shows it as a # sighn. Back to square one, Browser issue. And how to stop browsers from changing a link?

[DrDoc]

Put a simple text link (not generated by Flash) and see what happens. If it's presented correctly (with the #) it's not a browser issue.

Personally, I doubt that it's a browser problem. I use #'s in my URL's all the time, and have never experienced a problem like the one you're talking about. .. especially not if it's a newer browser.

The fact that it shows as # binary doesn't necessarily mean anything. I bet that a lot of non-word characters would be converted too.

I think it's a Flash issue.

Checked on their web site/help files?