Broken URLs on Metafilter

August 30, 2002 4:02 PM

I don't know if its just in IE or what, but several posts, the Gnod and plasticmonkey.com post are the most recent examples, point to http://www.metafilter.com/www.gnod.net (for example). I looked at the source, and this only happens on the posts that don't specify http. Is this an IE only thing, or does that always happen?
posted by Grod to bugs at 4:02 PM (6 comments total)

I imagine it would be the same in all browsers. Without "http://" the browser treat the link as internal. Thus www.whatever.com resolves to http://www.metafilter.com/www.whatever.com.

I think Matt fixes those by hand when he notices them.
posted by timeistight at 4:12 PM on August 30, 2002

Yeah. I guess I forgot to enter in the http://. Boy, is my face red.
posted by crunchland at 4:29 PM on August 30, 2002

The posters forgot to properly code their links
posted by mathowie at 4:52 PM on August 30, 2002

Perhaps a JavaScript alert should pop up if there are any URLs with http missing (or blank URLs), so the user can confirm it's intentional..? Would only take a couple of lines of code and would catch most potential errors, the only issue is whether people frequently need to insert URLs without http and so would be irritated by the alert.

Similar coding could also catch other basic errors like inserting a URL into the text rather than as a link. It's always better to help users get things right rather than correct them and make them feel silly afterwards.

posted by malevolent at 2:02 AM on August 31, 2002

Well yeah, malevolent, I could do that in 30 minutes work, but there is a Preview for a reason. Whenever I assemble a post, I check to see that every link opens in a new window properly.

As for people mixing titles and URLs, the preview shows that to them every time, so I'm still surprised when it happens (which like this other problem, isn't often).
posted by mathowie at 9:58 AM on August 31, 2002

It's always better to help users get things right rather than correct them and make them feel silly afterwards.

Better, maybe, but not nearly as much fun.
posted by timeistight at 10:41 AM on August 31, 2002