Can a HTML page have too many links and stop working?

[HMS_Irruncible]

@Little_Nemo

Because trying to keep 25,000 separate items organized by memory would be impossible.

HTML seemed like a relatively easy way to label individual files and then create indexes that allowed me to keep them organized.

Yes, I was questioning the practice of keeping 25,000 links in a single index file. If it’s a typo or a coding error, it’s going to be hard to find in a file that big. If it’s a size-related problem that goes away when you switch browsers, there’s no guarantee this won’t happen again soon.

If it were me, and I was determined to do this in HTML, I’d sooner spend my effort breaking down the giant index file into smaller index files.

[CookingWithGas]

@Little_Nemo

Another factor is the size of these files. The big indexes in question are all well over a megabyte.

That’s not big anymore.

@Little_Nemo

To clarify on my previous response regarding Javascript, I don’t know Javascript and did not knowingly use any of that language. But I acknowledge the possibility that in my ignorance of that language I might have accidentally written in a Javascript command without realizing it and my computer is trying to run it.

If you don’t know JavaScript it is not possible that you included some by accident. You need special HTML tags to tell the browser where the JavaScript section is, and JavaScript is nothing like HTML. The chances that you did that by accident are zero.

HTML is pretty forgiving of syntax errors, compared to programming languages. Most unmatched brackets or something wouldn’t disable an entire file or prevent loaded displayed links from working. You could try developer’s tools, like right-click on a dead link and then select Inspect to see what that part of the code looks like and see if there is an error evident.

Hard to diagnose without sitting down at your computer but as suggested, I would try a different browser. There are plenty of them that are not Microsoft.

(I am wondering how these index files are superior to organizing your files in a folder structure and using File Explorer to automatically index them. Plus there are lots of new things that have been invented in the last 20 years that might also do this for you a lot easier, and more effectively too.)

[jdc]

Maybe download trial version of UltraEdit and open your file. It can handle quite large files (many GB’s) easily. Open your index file and go to Coding and pick “HTML Tidy” and that imbeded tool with check the validity of your HTML file and show you where error are if you missed a bracket, used illegal character etc.

[Reply]

You might be missing a closing tag somewhere. In Chrome, push CTRL-SHIFT-J to open the Inspector, and go to the “Elements” tab to see how the browser is actually interpreting your HTML. You can expand the different nodes and see where it starts to break apart, or use the element picker to hover around your page to see what the browser is actually trying to render in the unusable whitespace that your eyes see.

[elfkin477]

@Reply

You might be missing a closing tag somewhere. In Chrome, push CTRL-SHIFT-J to open the Inspector, and go to the “Elements” tab to see how the browser is actually interpreting your HTML. You can expand the different nodes and see where it starts to break apart, or use the element picker to hover around your page to see what the browser is actually trying to render in the unusable whitespace that your eyes see.

Yeah. I’ve had issues before with missing <\a> tags, or paragraph tags missing a bracket.

I’d suggest copying the page into notepad++ and use the find feature. If you don’t have an equal number of < and >, or different numbers of A HREF and <\a> you’ll at least have narrowed down to what the problem is.

[Mangetout]

I’m going to chime in with the others and say this smells like an unmatched tag issue to me.

Here’s how to diagnose it; use halving.

1. Cut the file into two halves, saved into two new files
2. if both of them open OK, then it’s a volume/capacity problem, not a coding error
3. If one of them behaves strangely, take that file and repeat from step 1

Even if the file contains a hundred thousand links, you’ll narrow it down to less than a page of code in about 7 iterations of halving like this (assuming there is only one problem to find)

[Senegoid]

@Mangetout

1. Cut the file into two halves, saved into two new files
2. if both of them open OK, then it’s a volume/capacity problem, not a coding error
3. If one of them behaves strangely, take that file and repeat from step 1

That might be doable, but tricky and cumbersome. The act itself of chopping a file in half might create unmatched tags that would need to be patched up.

At the very least, you have <html> at the very top of the file and </html> at the end. You might have <head>…</head><body> tags near the top and </body> near the end. If you split the files, you might need to add that at the top of each piece.

Beyond that, if the file is little more than lines of <a>…</a> links, maybe it’s feasible. If there is much more structure to the file than that, it could get complicated.

[Caldazar]

(double post)

[ZipperJJ]

But you can run a web page without head and body tags. He can just cut and paste 90% of the links into another file and name it .html and see if the original file works, and see if the new file works. Then if one doesn’t work, cut it down more.

I do it all the time with mis-behaving CSV files. Method would be the same for HTML.

[Caldazar]

@DPRK

Some of the HTML validator plugins for Chrome, like Kingsquare, work on local files without uploading them anywhere.

This. You may have a syntax error someplace that’s messing up the rendering of the file. If you are running a Windows OS, you can launch Internet Explorer, load the HTML file in the browser window, and then hit F12 to launch the dev tools. In the Console tab, review any errors or warnings, and make necessary corrections in your file.

You can use other browsers for this debugging task, but you may need to download/install an HTML-validator plugin, depending on your browser of choice.

[gnoitall]

@Little_Nemo

Important note: I am not an expert in HTML or computers. Please explain things in simple terms.

Context: I have a large number of files that I’ve organized using very basic HTML. I put all of the files in one area, I give each a simple .HTM name, and I create indexes based on various ways I want to organize them (numerical, alphabetic, by origin, by date, by size, specialized categories, etc). Everything has been working fine for years and the size of the file collection grew, along with the index files.

Then a couple of weeks ago, some of the index files stopped working. I can still open them but when I do so, the page is dead; none of the links work, including those that link within the page itself. I can’t even use something like Control-F or the scroll bar to move around in the page.

I don’t thing it’s just an issue of the size of the files. They’re big but I have bigger files that are still working fine. And it’s just the three biggest indexes; smaller sub-indexes are still working fine.

So one possibility I’ve considered is that I crossed some kind of threshold and now have too many links in these main index pages and that’s shut them all down. I’ve done a little searching online and I’ve found guides that say you should avoid putting too many links on a single page but these seem to be style guidelines rather than actual technical limits. And they’re saying you shouldn’t put more than a hundred links on single page and I’ve gone far beyond that (I’ve never counted them but these pages have around 25,000 links apiece).

To give some technical details, I’ve used real bare bones HTML. Mainly (A HREF=) and (A NAME=") commands (I switched to parentheses in this post).

Any advice would be appreciated.

What are you using to “serve” these pages? A lightweight HTTP (web) server? or a “file://” URI for local filesystem access.

I keep wondering if the problem isn’t on the sending end, so to speak.

[ticker]

@ZipperJJ

But you can run a web page without head and body tags. He can just cut and paste 90% of the links into another file and name it .html and see if the original file works, and see if the new file works. Then if one doesn’t work, cut it down more.

I do it all the time with mis-behaving CSV files. Method would be the same for HTML.

I would tackle this in much the same way, except I would split the files in half each time. This is going to be the quickest way to narrow down the offending code.

[Ashtura]

Any semi-modern IDE is going to be able to find the problem right off if it’s a coding issue. I’d try Eclipse for a free option. It can edit it locally or remotely and isn’t going to send anything to any prying eyes if that’s what you’re worried about.

[Little_Nemo]

A belated update in case anyone is interested. Or in case somebody has a similar problem in the future and ends up reading this thread.

I tried Mangetout’s idea first. I split one of the big files in half and added a new start or end command to each half. These half files did not work.

I tried opening the file in Edge. The file worked in Edge. So apparently it’s a problem with the browser and not the file.

So worst case scenario, I can use Edge.

But then it got weird. After opening the file in Edge, I went back and tried it again in Chrome. It now works again in Chrome.

[Crossbreed]

If your HTML page is a list of some sort, format it so can view each element separately. That would help you to spot typos faster.

[Zyada]

@Mangetout

I’m going to chime in with the others and say this smells like an unmatched tag issue to me.

Here’s how to diagnose it; use halving.

1. Cut the file into two halves, saved into two new files
2. if both of them open OK, then it’s a volume/capacity problem, not a coding error
3. If one of them behaves strangely, take that file and repeat from step 1

Even if the file contains a hundred thousand links, you’ll narrow it down to less than a page of code in about 7 iterations of halving like this (assuming there is only one problem to find)

As a web developer, I approve this methodology.

Another thing you might do is to open the developer tools in Chrome (F12) for your page.

Go to the network tab
Check to see if the “disable cache” checkbox (should be second line from the top) is checked, check it if it isn’t, then reload
See if you are getting an error on the load of your file.
If not, go to the page and right click on the first place where you expect a link to be active and isn’t. This will show you the actual html that is the problem.

[Zyada]

@Little_Nemo

A belated update in case anyone is interested. Or in case somebody has a similar problem in the future and ends up reading this thread.

I tried Mangetout’s idea first. I split one of the big files in half and added a new start or end command to each half. These half files did not work.

I tried opening the file in Edge. The file worked in Edge. So apparently it’s a problem with the browser and not the file.

So worst case scenario, I can use Edge.

But then it got weird. After opening the file in Edge, I went back and tried it again in Chrome. It now works again in Chrome.

Oops, missed this!

With my experience, I would bet that the problem was that you had a buggy version in cache, and Chrome decided it was finally old enough to get a new copy.