I've noticed two bugs (or hidden features?) concerning the [url]-tag. I'm not sure if these are fixable for you guys, but they'll be good to know about at least.

There seems to be some kind of (malfunctioning) safety feature whenever you post a link to something within this forum; specifically, if the link contains this MB's url followed by a question mark, e.g.:
http://www.mariokart64.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1338200675
Here is supposed to be a semicolon:  ;

In the sentence above I really put a semicolon, but it got transformed into an ampersand upon posting (or previewing). I've experimented a bit with what happens under what conditions, but the behavior is far too rich. It seems that the next 'special' character after the link is affected: a semicolon turns into an ampersand, an ampersand turns into two ampersands, and I don't know what more.
Sometimes when you hit the preview button, the preview itself is not affected, but the input in the message area (where you type) is! I don't know what triggers this. You get a similar effect if you modify such a post. I have to deal with this every time I modify my original post in the pool topic in General (to add new players), not to mention while making this post.
A single quote (') appears to be an "antidote": if you change the "Here is" in my sentence above into "Here's", the semicolon survives!

The same thing happens with the other use of the [url]-tag. Here's a link which itself contains an ampersand: Send me a PM
I hit preview, and the ampersand in the link gets doubled in the input area. The following semicolon has survived the posting process, but it turns into an ampersand upon previewing or modifying this post:  ;

---

As for the other bug: as demonstrated above, there are two ways to use the [url]-tag, either with [url]address[/url] or [url=address]text[/url]. It would appear that there's a maximum of three links that you can post, three with each method. I already have one link of either type in this post, here are two more:
http://www.google.com
http://www.google.com
Google
Google
So far, so good. But now if I add one more link, I get a 403 error:

Quote:

I can understand that there would be a limit to the number of links you can post, but instead of a warning you get this 403 error, which is a bug in my view. It took me some experimenting to find that the number of usages of [url] is the (likely) culprit.

Maybe the symbol & has a meaning in html or css programing so that you can't really use it in a title...
I'm not really an expert about this anymore and I can't anyone as I've changed the subject of my studies...

TvL wrote on 06/04/12 at 05:27:45:


I experienced this earlier trying to list multiple links.

Since I was able to do without them, I didn't care but I asked Alex why that happened.

AlexPenev wrote on 04/14/12 at 06:19:34:


Maybe taking a closer look might uncover something, idk.

MrL1193 wrote on 06/04/12 at 11:43:27:

I've looked at the source code of this page. Your (and now also my) "&lt;" does not show up as "<" because the "&" is converted into "&amp;", so it looks like "&amp;lt;". Similarly, the "<" is converted into "&lt;". This is all pretty standard for form submission processing. In php there's even a special command htmlspecialchars() to do this. Of course there are also many custom scripts which convert all our usages of [b] and [url] etc. into their html counterparts.

Something is going very wrong when entering a forum link. Here's my actual entry:
Code:

Nothing going on here: & ;
(url)http://www.mariokart64.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1338816465(/url)
Supposed to be a semicolon: ;
(url)http://www.mariokart64.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1338816465(/url)
Supposed to be an ampersand: & 

(Note: the parentheses around url and /url should of course be '[' and ']', but I can't actually use the [url]-tag cause that would trigger the 403-error!)

The result:

Nothing going on here: & ;
http://www.mariokart64.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1338816465
Supposed to be a semicolon: ;
http://www.mariokart64.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1338816465
Supposed to be an ampersand: &

The source code: (I added line breaks for clarity):
Code:

Nothing going on here: &amp; ;<br />
<a href="http://www.mariokart64.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?action=dereferer&url=http://www.mariokart64.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1338816465" target="_blank">http://www.mariokart64.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1338816465</a><br />
Supposed to be a semicolon: &<br />
<a href="http://www.mariokart64.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?action=dereferer&url=http://www.mariokart64.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1338816465" target="_blank">http://www.mariokart64.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1338816465</a><br />
Supposed to be an ampersand: &amp&  

So it looks like the ampersands are first transformed into "&amp;" and then the first instance of a semicolon is transformed into an ampersand, which explains why an ampersand gets doubled, but not much more.

---

Omg, and this is what the last part of my post looks like in the input area after hitting the preview button:

Code:

The source code: (I added line breaks for clarity):
(code)Nothing going on here: &&& &<&br />&
<&a href="&http://www.mariokart64.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?action=dereferer&&url=http://www.mariokart64.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1338816465"& target="&_blank"&>&http://www.mariokart64.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1338816465<&/a>&<&br />&
Supposed to be a semicolon: &&<&br />&
<&a href="&http://www.mariokart64.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?action=dereferer&&url=http://www.mariokart64.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1338816465"& target="&_blank"&>&http://www.mariokart64.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1338816465<&/a>&<&br />&
Supposed to be an ampersand: &&&& (/code)

So it looks like the ampersands are first transformed into "&&&&"& and then the first instance of a semicolon is transformed into an ampersand, which explains why an ampersand gets doubled, but not much more. 

Wtf?

Why did you post 30times the same link?

what the fuck? people actually put links within URL tags? you’re supposed to do that only if you want to change the linked text…

Rumour has it that some of these issues have been fixed. I'm not sure if I believe that rumour, so tell me if you guys run into 404 errors when posting.

I have no idea what this topic is about, and why do all the hyperlinks get redirected from the message board rather than going directly to the linked site?

^ It's been like that for over a year, easily. Very troublesome that was to make that huge MK7 news topic which a lot of images and color codes... which dates from January 2011.