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Comment Weirdness
by Ted Slater on 05/21/2009 at 10:00 AM

Our blog is hosted on the TypePad platform.

They have recently introduced a bug that disallows you from using any HTML in your comments. I've submitted a bug report, and am hoping they fix this error ASAP.

I'll hold my tongue on what I think of their developers, and their policy of using paying customers as their beta testers. Hmf.

Sorry for the inconvenience. Hope to see it fixed shortly.

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Comments

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1. Chris said the following at 11:10 AM on May 21:

1

That's not a bug; it's a *feature*....;^)

Probably a sledgehammer approach to preventing cross-site scripting attacks or something similar. One would think their developers know how to write some code to sanitize input......


2. Dr. Ransom (E. Stephen Burnett) said the following at 12:10 PM on May 21:

2

I had wondered why suddenly my Blockquote and Emphasis tags weren't working -- which made some of my otherwise-well-formatted contributions look run-on and sloppy.

(If HTML is working, the "wondered" word up there should be in italics.)

Another quirk: at least on Boundless, sometimes while I'm typing something the page will quickly flash up the bot-prevention captcha image and box, then it will vanish quickly. This little blink-or-you'll-miss-it "feature" prevents me from effectively pushing the Post or Preview buttons; I'm forced to copy my text, refresh the whole page and try again, hoping the "flash" doesn't happen again.

(Drat. It happened again; I must have missed the flash. This forced me to copy my material, hit Refresh *and* make sure I hit Stop before it loads whatever code it is that's triggering that thing.)

Just for fairness and balance, here: Boundless otherwise runs a good clean blog. (I am referring to technical cleanness, not all commentators, especially when the topic is modesty and some have a tendency to be legalistic against guys and their eyes, but that is a topic for another post.)


3. BDB said the following at 12:57 PM on May 21:

3

No wonder rebooting my computer didn't work...


4. brx said the following at 1:19 PM on May 21:

4

BTW Ted, when did you guys take out the URL feature for commenters? I understand reasons for why, but only noticed it was gone a few weeks ago.


5. Ted Slater said the following at 1:43 PM on May 21:

5

Dr. Ransom -- that "feature" was added by TypePad. I don't like it, but there's nothing I can do about it.

brx -- that "feature" was added by TypePad. I've asked them to fix it, because I want y'all to be able to include URLs/hyperlinks if you'd like. I'm told they're working on reverting to the way it used to work.


6. Ted Slater said the following at 1:50 PM on May 21:

6

Looks like it may be fixed. Try using some HTML and let us know if it's behaving as expected. One request: No BLINK tags.


7. Justin T. said the following at 2:11 PM on May 21:

7

Ted, I was extremely tempted to use a blink tag... but I resisted.

Can you hear me now?

That should have been bold.

TypePad's developers should know that there are better ways of dealing with XSS attacks than totally turning off HTML support. Maybe if you emailed them a few basic articles on user input validation, they'd get the picture?


8. Mike said the following at 3:40 PM on May 21:

8

Chris (#1) wrote:

That's not a bug; it's a *feature*....;^)

Nope. You have to document a bug to turn it into a feature.

:-)


9. Chris said the following at 7:36 PM on May 21:

9

Mike writes:

Chris (#1) wrote:

That's not a bug; it's a *feature*....;^)

Nope. You have to document a bug to turn it into a feature.

:-)

In that case, it's an easter egg!


10. Justin T. said the following at 10:03 PM on May 21:

10

Haven't you heard?: "Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature."


11. Amir Larijani said the following at 8:19 AM on May 22:

11

Testing the blockquotes...

Ted says:

Looks like it may be fixed. Try using some HTML and let us know if it's behaving as expected. One request: No BLINK tags.

W00T!


12. Mike said the following at 8:27 AM on May 22:

12

Chris (#9) wrote:

In that case, it's an easter egg!

The big prize egg with all the goodies inside, right?

:-)


13. obewan said the following at 7:21 AM on May 26:

13

Yeah, but it is back to listing more than 50 comments in a thread. I like that a lot.


14. MarkS said the following at 8:35 AM on Jun 11:

14

Why are you a paying customer?
With all the millions, nay gazillions of Boundless folk, aren't there some of us who could support in that manner?
Maybe it's time for a good ol' fashion barn raisin'?


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Newer Post | Older Post


Comment Weirdness
by Ted Slater on 05/21/2009 at 10:00 AM

Our blog is hosted on the TypePad platform.

They have recently introduced a bug that disallows you from using any HTML in your comments. I've submitted a bug report, and am hoping they fix this error ASAP.

I'll hold my tongue on what I think of their developers, and their policy of using paying customers as their beta testers. Hmf.

Sorry for the inconvenience. Hope to see it fixed shortly.

Announcements | Mail This | Share on Facebook

Comments

Feed You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.

1. Chris said the following at 11:10 AM on May 21:

1

That's not a bug; it's a *feature*....;^)

Probably a sledgehammer approach to preventing cross-site scripting attacks or something similar. One would think their developers know how to write some code to sanitize input......


2. Dr. Ransom (E. Stephen Burnett) said the following at 12:10 PM on May 21:

2

I had wondered why suddenly my Blockquote and Emphasis tags weren't working -- which made some of my otherwise-well-formatted contributions look run-on and sloppy.

(If HTML is working, the "wondered" word up there should be in italics.)

Another quirk: at least on Boundless, sometimes while I'm typing something the page will quickly flash up the bot-prevention captcha image and box, then it will vanish quickly. This little blink-or-you'll-miss-it "feature" prevents me from effectively pushing the Post or Preview buttons; I'm forced to copy my text, refresh the whole page and try again, hoping the "flash" doesn't happen again.

(Drat. It happened again; I must have missed the flash. This forced me to copy my material, hit Refresh *and* make sure I hit Stop before it loads whatever code it is that's triggering that thing.)

Just for fairness and balance, here: Boundless otherwise runs a good clean blog. (I am referring to technical cleanness, not all commentators, especially when the topic is modesty and some have a tendency to be legalistic against guys and their eyes, but that is a topic for another post.)


3. BDB said the following at 12:57 PM on May 21:

3

No wonder rebooting my computer didn't work...


4. brx said the following at 1:19 PM on May 21:

4

BTW Ted, when did you guys take out the URL feature for commenters? I understand reasons for why, but only noticed it was gone a few weeks ago.


5. Ted Slater said the following at 1:43 PM on May 21:

5

Dr. Ransom -- that "feature" was added by TypePad. I don't like it, but there's nothing I can do about it.

brx -- that "feature" was added by TypePad. I've asked them to fix it, because I want y'all to be able to include URLs/hyperlinks if you'd like. I'm told they're working on reverting to the way it used to work.


6. Ted Slater said the following at 1:50 PM on May 21:

6

Looks like it may be fixed. Try using some HTML and let us know if it's behaving as expected. One request: No BLINK tags.


7. Justin T. said the following at 2:11 PM on May 21:

7

Ted, I was extremely tempted to use a blink tag... but I resisted.

Can you hear me now?

That should have been bold.

TypePad's developers should know that there are better ways of dealing with XSS attacks than totally turning off HTML support. Maybe if you emailed them a few basic articles on user input validation, they'd get the picture?


8. Mike said the following at 3:40 PM on May 21:

8

Chris (#1) wrote:

That's not a bug; it's a *feature*....;^)

Nope. You have to document a bug to turn it into a feature.

:-)


9. Chris said the following at 7:36 PM on May 21:

9

Mike writes:

Chris (#1) wrote:

That's not a bug; it's a *feature*....;^)

Nope. You have to document a bug to turn it into a feature.

:-)

In that case, it's an easter egg!


10. Justin T. said the following at 10:03 PM on May 21:

10

Haven't you heard?: "Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature."


11. Amir Larijani said the following at 8:19 AM on May 22:

11

Testing the blockquotes...

Ted says:

Looks like it may be fixed. Try using some HTML and let us know if it's behaving as expected. One request: No BLINK tags.

W00T!


12. Mike said the following at 8:27 AM on May 22:

12

Chris (#9) wrote:

In that case, it's an easter egg!

The big prize egg with all the goodies inside, right?

:-)


13. obewan said the following at 7:21 AM on May 26:

13

Yeah, but it is back to listing more than 50 comments in a thread. I like that a lot.


14. MarkS said the following at 8:35 AM on Jun 11:

14

Why are you a paying customer?
With all the millions, nay gazillions of Boundless folk, aren't there some of us who could support in that manner?
Maybe it's time for a good ol' fashion barn raisin'?


If you'd like to leave a comment, we're afraid you'll have to use a non-mobile device to do so. I just couldn't get the mobile comment entry form to work right. Alas. ~Ted.