Sometimes I want to link to a page that has a very long URL*, instead of quoting to excess.
It seems that something breaks long URLs by inserting carriage returns. These appear as whitespace or extraneous characters in the displayed link code, and the links no longer work when finally displayed in the thread.
Although I was using a browser set for Unicode when I copied the URL in, the URL appeared as a single string with no line breaks when I copied it, and also in the preview window. Only after the URL was permanently displayed in the thread did the extra characters appear.
Is there a way around this problem, so that we can paste URLs of arbitrary length? Thanks…
[sup]*You know the kind of URL: the long complex URL that encodes a database reference, a referring page ID, catalogue references, shopper ID, date, time, astrological data, sunspot density and/or all of the preceding…[/sup]
I know that long character strings, including some URLS, get spaces added into the middle. There is no way around this (well, if the URL contains a %20, you can replace it with a space, and the browser will change it back to a %20 when you click on it). I don’t really know anything about unicode in URLs, though.
I might be able to offer more insight if you could show what the URLs were before and after posting.
Except that not all browsers will do this. Those which follow the standards for http know that a space is an illegal character in a URL. Unfortunately, the official standards are one of the first casualties of the Browser Wars.
I don’t think the official (aren’t RFCs really only semi-official, though?) standard is being violated. The HTTP protocol only deals with the communication between the host and the server. By that point, the browser has already assumed that the user really meant %20, knowing that a space would be illegal. All that happens is that the user has less interaction with the HTTP. Just think of it as “auto-correct” for the address bar.
Easy. Use the vB code for URL. Put the lenthy address in the brackets with “url=http://www.thisisareallylongandannoyinglinkaddressthatgoesonincessantly/%20runforyourlife%20%*helpmeI’mgoingtocrashthewebsite” .
Then put some short title in the label section: “my link”.
Except that that doesn’t always work, Irishman. It’ll let you get a little longer than the auto-link, but a sufficiently long URL will still break somewhere in the middle.
You can save a little bit of space by using “+” in a URL in place of the “%20”. Both stand for the space character. That IS standard, and should be honored. Of course, it probably won’t buy you enough space anyway.