Inconsistent presentation of links

[Andrew Neil]

Mostly, the forum converts a link to a post/thread to a “preview” showing the author’s avatar and post title.

But sometimes it doesn’t.

Example:

Both of those links came from the menu ‘Copy link’ option.

Here:

 

In the above case, it was the same both in the editor and after posting.

Sometimes, the “preview” doesn’t show in the editor, but does show once posted.

[TDK]

 Testing stuff.

https://community.st.com/stm32-mcus-products-25/fdcan-cccr-init-bit-is-not-getting-cleared-stm32h723zg-16573
 

 

Edit: so when you paste a link, the forum software converts it to this weird format where you can “click and drag to move”. If you press ctrl+z once, it undoes this and has the bare link.

 

 

If you use Insert link instead, it just does a bare link.

[Zita LASZLOFI]

Hello ​@Andrew Neil and ​@TDK,

Thank you for flagging this inconsistency. I reached out to our platform provider to learn more about this behavior. I will keep you posted on this thread. 

Kind Regards, 
Zita

[Zita LASZLOFI]

Hello both, 

I learned that this happens when a link containing a hyphen is copied in an encoded format. In that case, the hyphen can appear as %2D, which prevents the link from showing as a preview card. As a best practice, I recommend one of these options when it happens again:

1. Paste the URL into your browser address bar first. The browser will decode it and display the clean version with proper hyphens, which you can then copy and paste into your post.
2. Navigate directly to the page and copy the URL from the address bar.

I hope this helps. 

Regards, 
Zita

[Andrew Neil]

As noted, the links came from the ‘Copy Link’ option in the menu:

So these are links which the forum has generated itself.

So you’re saying that the forum cannot properly handle URLs which it generates itself ?!

This has to be a forum bug, which should be fixed.

 

Another one today:

Here.

 

This is the link:

https://community.st.com/others%2Dhardware%2Dand%2Dsoftware%2D57/sthv1600l%2Dassembly%2Dorigin%2D168822?postid=753041#post753041

Indeed, the forum has URL-encoded the hyphens to %2D

So I’ll try copying direct from the browser address bar:

 

https://community.st.com/others%2Dhardware%2Dand%2Dsoftware%2D57/sthv1600l%2Dassembly%2Dorigin%2D168822?postid=753041#post753041

 

No - that does not work!

Chrome Version 154.0.8037.58 (Official Build) (64-bit) on Win11-Pro.

 

If I paste it into Notepad, it has already been URL-encoded:

 

If I manually edit that to replace most of the %2D with hyphens:

 

That’s worked - but note that there is still one %2D in that URL !

So the handling is still inconsistent.

[Zita LASZLOFI]

Hi ​@Andrew Neil 

Thanks for following up on this thread and bring some samples. 

I tested these links on my side:

1. Used the Copy link feature

    

2. From browser

I don’t experience the same behavior on my end. Let me investigate this internally and revert back to you. 

Kind Regards, 
Zita

[Andrew Neil]

Yes, it does seem to be inconsistent even with the same link !

[Andrew Neil]

Yes, it does seem to be inconsistent even with the same link !

 

​@Zita LASZLOFI For example this morning here it’s shown the previews:

 

But, just now, I posted the exact same 2 links - and it didn’t: