Comments on: MeFi music playlist flash widget incorrectly displays ampersands

MeFi music playlist flash widget incorrectly displays ampersands

RichardP — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 20:31:07 -0800

The MeFi music playlist flash widget displays tracks with ampersands in their name incorrectly.

For example, if you add Flesh & Bone to a playlist, it shows up in the flash widget as "Flesh & Bone by saulgoodman" instead of "Flesh & Bone by saulgoodman".

By: pb

pb — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 20:44:56 -0800

Thanks for letting us know, it should be working now.

By: TwoWordReview

TwoWordReview — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 20:49:53 -0800

The title also shows up like that in the RSS feed...at least in Firefox live bookmarks

By: Alvy Ampersand

Alvy Ampersand — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 21:05:34 -0800

That's just how we roll. Live with it.

By: RichardP

RichardP — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 21:12:52 -0800

Quick work pb! Thanks for the fix.

By: flapjax at midnite

flapjax at midnite — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 23:06:49 -0800

This is why the Beatles didn't title it "& I Love Her".

(Though now that pb's fixed it, maybe Sir Paul will retitle it and post it to MeFiMu.)

By the way... could you folks start sending me MeFiMusic Challenge ideas again? We're starting to run out...

By: blue_beetle

blue_beetle — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 00:42:49 -0800

That's just how we live. Roll with it.

By: Kattullus

Kattullus — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 10:56:11 -0800

Uh oh... now the new post preview is changing &image to ℑ and _ to spaces.

By: Kattullus

Kattullus — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 11:13:21 -0800

After talking to cortex I realize that my previous comment isn't all that clear. I had written a post with links to images in a database. Here is an example URL followed by the text that it got turned into when I hit preview:

http://research.mayavase.com/portfolio_hires.php?search=*Olmec*&date_added=&image=1944b&display=8&rowstart=0

http://research.mayavase.com/portfolio hires.php?search=*Olmec*&date added=ℑ=1944b&display=8&rowstart=0

Now, when I copy-paste the second text string I get this:

http://research.mayavase.com/portfolio_hires.php?search=*Olmec*&date_added=%E2%84%91=1944b&display=8&rowstart=0

As you can see &image got changed to ℑ and underscores to spaces but when I copy and paste the text string the underscores remain but &image has been changed to %E2%84%91.

By: Kattullus

Kattullus — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 11:49:16 -0800

Actually, now that I look at the actual html that preview churns out it is:

http://research.mayavase.com/portfolio_hires.php?search=*Olmec*&date_added=ℑ=1944b&display=8&rowstart=0

Which somehow loses the underscores when I click the preview link.

By: pb

pb — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 12:53:22 -0800

Kattullus, thanks for the info. I'll take a look at it. Just to be clear: it sounds like your issue is on MeFi and not related to the Flash Music player in any way.

By: Kattullus

Kattullus — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 13:01:05 -0800

Yeah. I didn't want to post a whole new bug post and this seemed vaguely related, what with ampersand issues and everything. Slightly more data: I posted a link 10 days ago that had underscores and that was fine. I just posted those links to the front page by replacing the garbled URLs with the actual ones after I had previewed so whatever it is has something to do with preview.

By: pb

pb — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 16:22:59 -0800

Yep, the text wasn't being escaped properly for the form fields. It should be better now, but I didn't ever see anything strange happening with spaces and underscores.

By: RichardP

RichardP — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 17:29:36 -0800

As long as we're discussing character entities and escaping, allow me to note that preview "eats"
character entities in Ask Metafilter "New Question" and MetaTalk "New Post". Interestingly the main MetaFilter "New Post" does not display this behavior.

In more detail, after clicking preview in Ask and MeTa text that generates character entities (i.e. "&" or "&image;") get turned into their literal equivalents (i.e. & or ℑ) in the post text entry box - so if you preview before you post you can get something other than you expected.

By: Kattullus

Kattullus — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 19:10:44 -0800

Thanks, pb!

I don't know what was going on with the underscores. Maybe it was a Firefox thing. I'm using 3.0.4 on XP.

By: pb

pb — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 16:02:17 -0800

The Ask and MetaTalk post forms should be escaped properly now too.