This page is for describing problems that various web browsers produce when reading or editing Wiki pages. It would probably be a good idea to say exactly what versions you're using on what OSes. Some of these problems may really be problems with the HTML produced by Wiki.
CharonBrowser problems
- (the version in release 2.3 of Inferno) Old versions of this browser don't know how to break lines in edit boxes, so you get one loooong line. Ouch.
NetscapeNavigator problems
- (versions 4.5 and 4.7 at least on various Windows systems) Some versions of Netscape on Windows refuse to make an edit box larger than 32k, making it impossible to edit large Wiki pages. This may be because they use the regular Win32 edit box, so perhaps other browsers on Windows have the same problem. (See: TooBigToEdit)
- (version 4.something on FreeBSD: GarethMcCaughan some time in 2000) Some versions of Netscape on some Unix platforms have a horrible memory leak in their edit boxes, so that doing a non-trivial amount of editing can result in the browser growing to use huge amounts of memory and maybe crashing when it hits a system resource limit.
- (version 6.2 on MacOsx) Hitting the back button after it fails to update the page with changes, loses changes. I.E. Hit Edit, change page contents, hit save, watch CantOpenWikiDbForUpdate, hit back button to try again, see changes lost.
''Do any of these bugs still matter?
MozillaBrowser problems
(One alleged problem deleted; it turns out not to be real.)
- (version 0.9.1 on Windows NT or Linux; GarethMcCaughan + MarkoSchulz, 2001-06-18) The "copy to clipboard" operation (ctrl-C) throws away whitespace at the start of a line. Even when it's copying from an edit box. It's possible to screw up formatting very badly by not noticing this...
- 2001-06-22 - MarkoSchulz - Linux - GaleonBrowser using the GeckoEngine from MozillaBrowser 0.9: Strange thing. After editing MetaphorsWeLiveBy I discovered that two hyphens and a few single quotation marks turned into question marks. After looking at the EditCopy I found out that those quotations marks were different from the ones I can type (�`'") and the hyphens were a little bit smaller than mine (-). I was neither able to copy and paste them nor could I type any of them into this form. I was able to type what looks like the shorter hyphen in other applications (emacs, xterm) using Compose (MultiKey?) and hitting '-' twice. Strange. I am not sure where the limitation lies here: The OperationsSystem? or the WebBrowser. I also wonder what OperationSystem? and Keyboard the author of the text PaulCaswell used to enter those keys.
- WindowsXP - Mozilla 1.5 - In code examples, Mozilla displays double blank lines instead of single blank lines. It seems that "Pre" tags already include a blank line, and the P-tag includes yet another. I would suggest that the wiki renderer not embed P tags in Pre tags.
KonquerorBrowser problems
- (possibly version 2.0 on FreeBSD; I forget: GarethMcCaughan, some time in 2000) Some versions of Konqueror took grave exception to the broken HTML that Wiki used to produce for pages containing code, with the result that the entire remainder of the page would be shown in a monospaced font. I believe that both Wiki and Konqueror have now fixed this. :-)
- (version 2.1 on FreeBSD: GarethMcCaughan, 2001-06-18) Konqueror destroys tabs in text areas, replacing them with spaces. Editing any non-trivial Wiki page with Konqueror becomes a nightmare, because you not only have to type in surrogate tabs yourself but also have to go through reinstating them throughout the original page content.
- (version 2.1 on FreeBSD: GarethMcCaughan, 2001-06-18) Wiki currently uses "<p></p>" as a paragraph separator and doesn't enclose actual paragraphs in <p>...</p>. Konqueror (excusably) takes this as meaning that each pair of paragraphs is separated by an empty paragraph, and therefore supplies considerably more vertical space than looks right.
The solution to this is very easy: Wiki should use "</p><p>" as a paragraph separator instead. This would also make the Wiki's markup more logical. (Apologies for ThreadMode, please move this comment somewhere more appropriate if need be.)
OperaBrowser problems
- (version 5.12 for Windows: 2001-07-01) Opera appears not to recognize the paragraphs used by Wiki as such, instead only using single line breaks between the paragraphs. Quite the opposite of what Konqueror does; most likely related to the use of an empty paragraph <p></p> to separate paragraphs. [Should be okay with version 7 onwards.]
Can someone please fix this? It's really annoying to have all paragraphs in one big block of text... Just turn it into a <p> tag without the </p> please?
SafariBrowser problems
- The tab space colon space method of SimulatingQuoteBlocks is causing problems with Safari 1.3.1. It puts the quote all on one really long line, which is extremely irritating. [Does Konqueror also do this?]
I'm a Safari 1.3.1 user on OS X 10.3.9, and the following quote block shows up fine:
-
- Simulated quote block
- term
- definition
The correct incantation for this is "tab space colon tab". Perhaps that is the source of your confusion. (BTW, you can type a tab in Safari's textedit with control-Q control-I).
CategoryWikiEditing
Wiki Browser Problems