Re: Problems with & in URIs (Which browsers work)

From: JohnTNYC (johntnyc@yahoo.com)
Date: Mon, Sep 20 1999 

Message-ID: <001e01bf03c3$e89be4a0$1300a4d8@nyr.cable.rcn.com>
From: "JohnTNYC" <johntnyc@yahoo.com>
To: <www-validator@w3.org>
Date: Mon, 20 Sep 1999 19:57:29 -0400
Subject: Re: Problems with & in URIs (Which browsers work)

TEST RESULTS BELOW

> <snip>
> you can do so by using the &amp; entity:
>
> <a href="http://foo.com/search?keyword=food&time=today">Today's
food</a>
>
> Every browser I've tested this on (probably something like NN 4.x, IE
> 5.0, and Opera 3.6) handled it correctly.  I'm not sure how far you
> must go back in history to find one that doesn't.
>
> David

Under Windows 95, I tested the following URL (a simple AltaVista
search):

http://www.altavista.com/cgi-bin/query?pg=q&what=web&q=html+vali
dator

(URL was within a web page as a link.  This may not fit on one line
within your email program)

On the Following Browsers:

Netscape v2.02, v3.04, v4.61
IE 4, IE 5
Opera 3.60
Amaya 2.1
Lynx 2.8.1r1 (compiled Win32)
WebTV Viewer v2.0b551 (approximates WebTV rendering)

The link worked correctly and showed up in the status bar with only & in
all browsers EXCEPT in Amaya.  The link breaks in Amaya and is passed to
AltaVista as is (with the &amp; entity), which, of course,  AltaVista
doesn't understand.  Kinda odd since Amaya is the W3C browser.  Anybody
wanna pass this on to the Amaya folks?  An odd side note: the Page
Source View in Netscape 2 and 3 will show the source without the &amp;
entity and simply show an &.

Hope that helps nail down a bit of how browsers will handle it.  Anybody
with some other platform tests?

John