Why won't Firefox open a web page if there's an apostrophe in the URL?
When I click on a link and the underlying URL contains punctuation, specifically an apostrophe, I get a page not found error. Both Safari and Chrome handle these URLs seamlessly.
All Replies (9)
hint: try to solve the problem with the add-on URL-fixer
Such links may need to escaped properly to make them work.
Can you post a link to a publicly accessible page where this is happening?
Here is one: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/Sometimes_It's_Just_People_Being_Bad_At_Their_Jobs
Here's another: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/Jonathan_Karl's_Bad_Awful_Week
I have this problem several times a week. Safari opens them perfectly.
Firefox is escaping the quote a %27 and the server doesn't like this an redirects to the website with the quote.
HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Server: Apache
Location: /blogs/politics/Sometimes_It's_Just_People_Being_Bad_At_Their_Jobs
So both are stubborn and this is getting nowhere.
The single quote is in the 'extra' category and might not require escaping, but Firefox insists in doing this.
safe = "$" | "-" | "_" | "." | "+"
extra = "!" | "*" | "'" | "(" | ")" | ","
unreserved = alpha | digit | safe | extra
That is well and good (FF does substitute %27 when I paste it here),
But what you are saying is that there is no solution except to use Safari.
Modified by msmollynd
You can try to contact the website and ask them to look into this.
It is normal practice to allow to escape characters this way and they shouldn't redirect to the unescaped version.
If it is a server-side problem, why do I have no difficulty when I use Safari? It is difficult for me to argue with them that it is THEIR problem, if the problem exists only for Firefox users. I have seen others comment on it recently also. It seems to me that Firefox needs to change something to allow a link with an apostrophe to resolve properly.
Thanks for your response, but it does not solve anything.
... at least Karl's bad awful week got fixed to http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/jonathan-karl-bad-awful-week.
Looks like the site staff got informed somehow about these problems. I could not find the other blogs...
Modified by smo