Links in the forum don't work if there's a character after them

Let's try some examples: https://forums.garmin.com, by typing or https://forums.garmin.com. Let's see if these work

TL;DR 

- the problem is not with links per se (clickable <A> elements) that have a character after them, but bare URLs (i.e. plain text URLs) with a trailing character (e.g. comma or period) that were inappropriately linkified by the forum to include the trailing character. (Note that other OSs/apps such as iOS and Slack are smart enough to exclude trailing punctuation when linkifying a bare URL.)

It’s the links themselves, resulting from linkification of bare URLs and punctuation, that are bad. It’s not possible for a literal link, followed by another character, to be broken due to the trailing character (unless your browser is broken)

 - the reason it works for you in a browser and not in your email is because the email contains the original comment (which had the issue), but the comment has since been edited to avoid the issue. (i saw the original comment in a browser, and it had the issue).

Detailed blogpost:

Well, there is a problem if you insert a bare url followed by a comma or period, because the forum will auto-linkify such URLs and incorrectly include the comma or period.

There's a couple of workarounds for that exact problem:

- manually create the link yourself (using CTRL/CMD-K)

- trigger auto-linkification early, by pressing space after you type the URL

- after the URL is incorrectly linkified, edit the link

I've never seen a problem where any character following a link breaks the link (if you think about this, it's not possible, unless your browser is broken). Here when I say link, I mean a literal clickable link (<a> element), not a bare URL that may or may not be eventually linkified by the forum platform.

Obviously if the link target itself has an extra character, this will break the link unless the server decides to ignore that character (which it likely won't)

flocsy🤠 said:

This week I encountered at least two links in the forum that didn't work (404), both because the link included an extra character at the end (comma or dot

Yes, it's probably because someone typed or pasted a bare url, they followed it up with a comma or period, and the forum decided to auto-linkify the url incorrectly.

imo the real solution is for the forum to be intelligent about it how auto-creates links. As a counter-example, ios is smart enough to exclude trailing commas, periods or other punctuation when performing auto-linkification (in apps such as Notes or Messages).

flocsy🤠 said:

This comment: forums.garmin.com/.../1879252 has a link. From a browser it works, but when I click at the link in Gmail (android) to open the link, there's an extra comma at the end of the url. I got the email from the forum, because I am subscribed to that thread (as I commented in it)

What actually happened is that comment was edited.

I saw the same comment when it was originally posted; I clicked on the link and it was broken for me, as expected. The original comment had a comma at end of the link target itself, but the poster subsequently edited it so the comma is no longer part of the link.

The reason it doesn't work in your email notification is because the email notification contains the original comment and not the edited comment.

TL;DR the real problem is with dumb forum auto-linkification.

e.g. if I type https :// www dot google dot com comma, I get a bad link (the link target itself is bad):

https://www.google.com,

(EDIT: the hilarious thing is that in the above example, the url is linkified while I edit the post, but once I submit the post, it's unlinkified. This is regardless of whether I include "http://" or not.)

if I type https :// www dot google dot com space backspace comma, the link is fine, because the space triggers auto-linkification early, so that the comma isn't included:

https://www.google.com,

Anyway these forums suck, they'll never be fixed.

The various issues with auto-linkification are why I usually use square brackets to make sure my links aren't changed by the forum to something I don't like.

EDIT:

It looks like the unlinkification is happening because the comma immediately follows the FQDN (there's no trailing "/" or path).

Here's an example that works:

Type www dot google dot com imghp comma - bad link:

www.google.com/imghp,

Type www dot google dot com imghp space backspace comma - good link:

www.google.com/imghp,

imo this is another example of how the forum platform (which Garmin chose but did not develop) has a lot of the same types of problems as Garmin's devices and CIQ.

The forum has a ton of features, but most of them don't work properly and/or have very poor usability. Personally I'd rather have fewer features, provided that they work properly and have great usability.

I made a meta post for this:

[https://forums.garmin.com/developer/connect-iq/f/discussion/399746/meta-the-forums-breaks-bare-urls-which-are-followed-by-punctuation-e-g-period-or-comma-the-resulting-link-incorrectly-includes-the-punctuation]