Dear god what is this.

December 7, 2010 3:56 AM

This html/css problem has been driving me crazy: in IE, URLs that are coded: <a href="http://www.ecaa.ee/?">www.ecaa.ee</a> are rendered on screen as 'http://www.ecaa.ee/' but as you can see the http is not in the label. Similarly, mailto: links have the 'mailto:' rendered in front of them even though this only appears in the href attribute. It only happens with the associated stylesheet, not if I view the non-styled html doc in IE. It does not happen in any other browser.

If you need to see the html, it's here: http://www.lokisantics.nl/Initial/html/eAIP/EE-GEN-1.1-en-GB.html. CSS is in http://www.lokisantics.nl/Initial/html/eAIP.css, but afaics there's nothing in there that would produce this result. Screenshot to prove I'm not crazy: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/581789/Outlook.jpg

I'm very sorry for asking such a stupid tech question here, but I'm at the end of my wits!

posted by Skyanth to Computers & Internet (10 answers total)

The "http" does not show up for me when I view that link. It looks like it's something Outlook is doing to the links. Maybe a security setting that displays the actual link URL instead of the linked URL text, to avoid phishing-type links like:
<a href="http://www.stealyourmoneys.com">PayPal</a>
posted by EndsOfInvention at 4:00 AM on December 7, 2010

I took some browsershots.org snapshots (I'm on a mac so I can't see it myself) and they show the same thing, for IE 6 and 7 anyway. 8 failed. An outlook issue is therefore not likely...
posted by Skyanth at 4:02 AM on December 7, 2010

Sorry, I said Outlook for some reason, I guess I meant Internet Explorer. Check if the anti-phishing thing is turned on in the Security settings.

I am viewing the page in Firefox.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 4:02 AM on December 7, 2010

Hmm, I viewed the page in IE with the anti-phishing stuff turned off and it still showed the http. Must be something else.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 4:27 AM on December 7, 2010

I just confirmed it is something in the eAIP-default.css that is included, but I don't find the exact issue at a quick glance. I'm really poor at CSS issues, so I'm going to assume someone smarter will come along soon. If the problem is still not isolated when I check back in a few hours I'll try to dig a bit deeper.
posted by Lame_username at 4:38 AM on December 7, 2010

I'm not sure what exactly is causing this either, but wanted to add that it does not happen if I disable Javascript.
posted by Skybly at 5:07 AM on December 7, 2010

It's not the CSS - it's JavaScript.

It looks like the amendments.js is going through and rewriting the links so they include a "amdt=show" parameter (purpose seems to be trying to maintain state between pages) - I think a side-effect of this is to change the link text too.

Not sure exactly which bit, without spending more time investigating, but the remakeUrl function looks relevant.
posted by siskin at 5:11 AM on December 7, 2010

Hello Skyanth
I'm pretty sure the code that is doing this is in the javascript file, rather than in the CSS, which whilst possible, is very unlikely:

http://www.lokisantics.nl/Initial/html/amendments.js

The code about 3/4 of the way down seems to be rewriting the links, but ONLY for IE (which would explain your issue) - note "if browserName == Microsoft Internet Explorer"

/**
 * Function to bypass IE braindamage search / hash ordering
 * It reorders properly the href part with search and anchor.
 * @param a location which has search, href and hash attributes
 */
function remakeUrl(loc) {

	var browserName = navigator.appName;
	if (browserName == "Microsoft Internet Explorer") {
	
		// Strip search part
		var temp = loc.href.split('?')[0];
		// Strip Anchor part
		temp = temp.split('#')[0];
		// Append search
		temp = temp + loc.search;
		// Append anchor
		temp = temp + loc.hash;
		
		loc.href = temp;
	}
}

posted by derbs at 5:15 AM on December 7, 2010

snap siskin!
posted by derbs at 5:15 AM on December 7, 2010

Christ, and I don't know anything about javascript. But thanks so much for pinpointing it, guys! I'm going to hand this over to someone who does.
posted by Skyanth at 5:30 AM on December 7, 2010