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I decided to be more 'metal' and add some umlauts to my 'occupation', which then appears as my ranking. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_umlaut)

When I first did this, it appeared just fine as my ranking. But sometime today, it ceased working as such, instead putting the html code for umlauts in there instead. I don't think this is a brower issue, because when I view my profile, I still see the umlauted characters.

Something change?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Okay, and now they're back again - but not on my profile page (where it says, "Ranking: Gargantüan Squiggöth")

In Fairness, Gargant& uuml;an Squigg& ouml;th sounds a lot more metal.

But I can see the ü just fine in the forums and the garbled version on the profile.

Firefox 3.6.8 if that helps.

Heavy metal?

Anyways, it's the same story on Safari!

Non-standard characters get encoded in forms to reduce the scope of cross site scripting exploits. Basically it works fine, but every time you edit you'll have to manually update. A minor pain but it keeps your account safe.

I followed that, but why do they not display correctly sometimes?

I love the umlaut. I love the look on anglo faces when I pronounce it...

/karmahhhhh.

Redbeard wrote:I followed that, but why do they not display correctly sometimes?

It is like this:
1. You enter them in the user form and click 'save' - they are encoded once and display correctly
2. You edit your profile, they appear incorrectly in the user form (in encoded form), you click save and it will then save the incorrect version as they are encoded again, so are double encoded
3. You notice the error, so edit your profile again, replacing the invalid encoded version with the original version again.

It is a bit of a glitch but one that is infrequent enough that I stay on the side of total safety and put up with. Without adequate encoding, people could put in locations like "><script.... which would then allow scripts to be executed and user logins changed or stolen.>