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Why don't urls display as hypertext in messages?

  • 18 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 9 views
  • Last reply by Matt

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When I receive a message with a url it doesn't display as a clickable hyperlink.

When I receive a message with a url it doesn't display as a clickable hyperlink.

All Replies (18)

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do they work as links if you click on them?

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Matt said

do they work as links if you click on them?

No, they display as text only...nothing to click.

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Diego Victor said

Thanks, but this doesn't answer the question. The urls are not displaying as hyperlinks, only as text.

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Sounds to me your complaint is that hyperlinks don't work. Too go back to your response to me, there is text there, have you actually tried clicking it? or just baulked because it does not look like you think a link should look? Is this on mail you receive or mail you compose?

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Yes, I tried clicking it and it's just text, i.e, it's not a link that doesn't work. It's on received mail which displays properly on other mail applications and devices.

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So it is a link that does not work, I am sorry but that is how I see it. So follow the not working troubleshooting steps. If you think it is not a link at all, ask you correspondent why the did not make it one.

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Well, yes, it is a link , e.g., http://www..... but it doesn't display as a hyperlink. I have checked all the troubleshooting steps and none of them apply. This only happens in Thunderbird and it happens with all messages I get that contain urls. If I view these messages in Apple Mail or on an iPad an iPhone or in Gmail, the links display properly so I have to think it is a Thunderbird issue.

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If you use the mouse to hover over the http://www. etc text, does it show the link info in the bottom Status Bar?

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No, the url displays as text, not hypertext.

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It's possible that something en-route is sanitizing the links for your own protection (whether you like it or not!) But I can't immediately see why this would affect only Thunderbird.

Could you use ctrl+u to view the source of an affected message, and copy-and-paste the link-related part here? (Assuming there's nothing too personal.)

I imagine these links work if you copy-and-paste them into your browser?

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Yes, the links work if I copy and paste. Here's the source:

Delivered-To: mbullen54@gmail.com Received: by 10.216.123.207 with SMTP id v57csp3966438weh;

       Fri, 2 Jan 2015 12:13:10 -0800 (PST)

X-Received: by 10.66.224.72 with SMTP id ra8mr124129995pac.43.1420229588931;

       Fri, 02 Jan 2015 12:13:08 -0800 (PST)

Return-Path: <ada27@sfu.ca> Received: from rm-rstar1.sfu.ca (rm-rstar1.sfu.ca. [142.58.101.3])

       by mx.google.com with ESMTPS id nu5si70942325pbc.197.2015.01.02.12.13.08
       for <mbullen54@gmail.com>
       (version=TLSv1 cipher=RC4-SHA bits=128/128);
       Fri, 02 Jan 2015 12:13:08 -0800 (PST)

Received-SPF: none (google.com: ada27@sfu.ca does not designate permitted sender hosts) client-ip=142.58.101.3; Authentication-Results: mx.google.com;

      spf=none (google.com: ada27@sfu.ca does not designate permitted sender hosts) smtp.mail=ada27@sfu.ca

X-Spam-Level: Spam-Level Received: from bentley2.sfu.ca (bentley2.nfs.sfu.ca [192.168.102.43]) by rm-rstar1.sfu.ca (8.14.3/8.14.3/SFU-5.0H) with ESMTP id t02KD7xF000109 for <mbullen54@gmail.com>; Fri, 2 Jan 2015 12:13:07 -0800 (PST) Received: from bentley2.sfu.ca (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by bentley2.sfu.ca (Postfix) with ESMTP id B34D82660C5 for <mbullen54@gmail.com>; Fri, 2 Jan 2015 12:13:07 -0800 (PST) Received: from bentley2.sfu.ca (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by bentley2.sfu.ca (Postfix) with ESMTP id A490F2660C7 for <mbullen54@gmail.com>; Fri, 2 Jan 2015 12:13:07 -0800 (PST) Received: from mailbox1.sfu.ca (load-balancer.sfu.ca [142.58.101.11]) by bentley2.sfu.ca (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9FD2C2660C5 for <mbullen54@gmail.com>; Fri, 2 Jan 2015 12:13:07 -0800 (PST) Date: Fri, 2 Jan 2015 12:13:07 -0800 (PST) From: Alan Doree <ada27@sfu.ca> To: Mark Bullen <mbullen54@gmail.com> Message-ID: <983898730.18105062.1420229587621.JavaMail.zimbra@sfu.ca> Subject: i told you MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="----=_Part_18105061_1581890370.1420229587620" X-Originating-IP: [96.48.62.18] X-Mailer: Zimbra 8.0.7_GA_6037 (ZimbraWebClient - FF34 (Mac)/8.0.7_GA_6021) X-Authenticated-User: ada27@sfu.ca Thread-Topic: i told you Thread-Index: wOqoGIYXkLrQE+8UbKgA2yFN5HYAGQ==


=_Part_18105061_1581890370.1420229587620

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

http://www.cbc.ca/sports-content/hockey/nhl/game/1442823/boxscore/

--

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And of course the pasting here has undone any of the potential obfuscation I was hoping to see.:-S

Does the link as it appears here match exactly what you copy-and-pasted?

I occasionally need to demonstrate code here and have to jump through hoops to make it display as it appears in source code. For instance, angle brackets are used in tags, but to demonstrate the tag code you need to double-code it to prevent it being decoded.

&lt;tag&gt; turns into <tag>

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Zenos: Plain text email, but still should show links. Notice the mention of: X-Mailer: Zimbra.

located; https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=982247

https://bugzilla.zimbra.com/show_bug.cgi?id=96240

Modified by Toad-Hall

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Yes, the link is the same, except that it displays as a hyperlink in this message but not in the email.


Zenos said

And of course the pasting here has undone any of the potential obfuscation I was hoping to see.:-S Does the link as it appears here match exactly what you copy-and-pasted? I occasionally need to demonstrate code here and have to jump through hoops to make it display as it appears in source code. For instance, angle brackets are used in tags, but to demonstrate the tag code you need to double-code it to prevent it being decoded. &lt;tag&gt; turns into <tag>
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Good find, Anje, but bugzilla shows us the URL being stripped completely, yet the OP sees the link but somehow it's disabled. So while I think zimbra is still the source of the problem, it's moved on from the situation in the reported bug. I guess zimbra have reacted to the bug but not in an entirely satisfactory way. I'd still like to understand how they disable what appears to be a valid link.

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Please send me one of the mails as an attachment. That is save as a file and then attachment or use the message menu to forward as attachment. My email address is unicorn dot consulting at gmail dot com For one, I will try and post the relevant part of the message source with the url for all to see, and hopefully work out what is actually happening.. I know Thunderbird sanitizes HTML and disables scripting. My guess from the dark side of the moon is that the link is wrapped in JavaScript and therefore disabled. But it would be nice to know the cause, not guess.

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Ok I have the message and it is worse that I could have thought possible.

In Answer to Mark I must say the others must actively scan message content for things that look like hyperlinks and activate them, just as this forum does (damn it).

The message HTML you sent is simply broken on so many levels.

The link is not a link it is text. The standard for a hyper link in HTML is to have a href= tag such as that shown below.


 <a href="http://www.w3schools.com">Visit W3Schools</a> 

Your message, once I untangled a spaghetti factory full of spaghetti code reads.


<Div> http://www.cbc.ca/sports-content/hockey/nhl/game/1442823/boxscore/ </Div>

Not a sign of anything to make the item into a hyperlink. So as I said earlier it is the search and activate on other clients that is the issue, they fix without knowing it what was broken. Thunderbird has the same sort of thing in it's text display code, as text knows nothing of Hyperlinks Thunderbird linkifies them on display.

Please notify Zimbra of the bug. Their HTML generator is fundamentally broken.

Modified by Matt