The Attack of the Evil Smileys in SGF URL tags

Wiz Feinberg · Post by **Wiz Feinberg** » 31 Jul 2006 7:14 am

Prologue

Today, and not for the first time, I was replying to a topic with a pasted URL to a search results page and when I posted my reply and viewed the results I discovered that a red smiley had replaced a colon in the URL and the link was aslo broken. I had forgotten to disable smileys in my reply. Doh!

Revelation

Under the textarea there is a checkbox labeled "Disable Smilies (sic) in This Post." I checked it and resubmitted, but found that the URL was not converted into a link because it contained a couple of = signs. Evidently, the UBB's concealed URL tags can only have one equal sign, and that is right after the opening url statement, like this - [ URL= ]anchor text[/URL]. I didn't want to paste the loooooong url into my reply and cause horizontal scrolling, which is why I used an embedded url tag.

Solution

I found that my best bet was to use an HTML hyperlink tag instead of the UBB tag. I hand coded the tag and posted it, only to find that damned Smiley was back! The Board had forgotten my choice to disable smileys! Unfortunately, the forum software does not set a cookie to remember our posting options for disabling smileys (hint hint b0b) and always turns them back on after each submission. I'd rather have to enable smileys in each post or reply, but that's just my preference.

Epilogue

If you are going to copy and paste a URL into a forum topic or reply and it contains any characters that cound be converted into a smiley, or contains equal signs, use the HTML hyperlink tags and DISABLE SMILEYS, before you submit. If you get it wrong and have to edit your post don't forget to re-check the box to Disable dad-gum smileys! I hate those things!

------------------
Bob "Wiz" Feinberg
Moderator of the SGF Computers Forum
Visit my Wiztunes Steel Guitar website at: http://www.wiztunes.com/
or my computer troubleshooting website: Wizcrafts Computer Services,
or my Webmaster Services webpage.
Learn about current computer virus and security threats here.
Read Wiz's Blog for security news and update notices

[This message was edited by Wiz Feinberg on 31 July 2006 at 11:57 AM.]

b0b · Post by **b0b** » 31 Jul 2006 10:47 am

Okay, here's a link with two equals signs: http://steelguitarforum.com/cgi-bin/search.cgi?action=intro&default=12&foo=foo

and here it is embedded with the URL tag.

I don't know what URLs could trigger smileys, as a colon is invariably followed by // in a URL.

------------------
<img align=left src="http://b0b.com/b0bxicon.gif" border="0"> Bobby Lee
-b0b- quasar@b0b.com 
System Administrator 
My Blog

Wiz Feinberg · Post by **Wiz Feinberg** » 31 Jul 2006 11:00 am

Here is the link b0b:
http://www.google.com/search?q=anti+spyware+mac+os &start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official

Same link concealed

Hmmm. It seems to be ok now as an embedded URL. I just have to remember to kill the smileys when posting URLs.

I was wrong about multiple equals signs in URLs. The smiley was destroying the links.

Wiz[This message was edited by Wiz Feinberg on 31 July 2006 at 12:11 PM.]

Wiz Feinberg · Post by **Wiz Feinberg** » 31 Jul 2006 11:07 am

Here is the same link, but with smileys allowed:

http://steelguitarforum.com/redface.gif[/img]fficial]Google Anti-Spyware For Mac OS

Allowing smileys in a URL may break the link completely, as in this case.

Wiz[This message was edited by Wiz Feinberg on 31 July 2006 at 12:09 PM.]

Jeff Agnew · Post by **Jeff Agnew** » 1 Aug 2006 4:08 am

You could also use TinyURL.com to convert the link. Much shorter and you don't have to worry about any non-alpha characters.

Your evil link translates to: http://tinyurl.com/f4pt4

b0b · Post by **b0b** » 1 Aug 2006 9:29 am

Wiz,

It would probably be better to remove your personal client encoding information from the end of the link, instead of disabling smileys. You can remove everything after &start=0 without affecting the search results.

------------------
<img align=left src="http://b0b.com/b0bxicon.gif" border="0"> Bobby Lee
-b0b- quasar@b0b.com 
System Administrator 
My Blog