Safari and the Addventure

[Catfish]

I probably should have brought this up quite a while ago...

Using Safari as one's browser on the Mac, it is impossible to add new episodes or comments in the Addventure. It seems to misinterpret the links. Upon pressing "Accept" to try to create a new episode, the page it tries to load is http:/~addventure/cgi-bin/newproc.cgi/~addventure/game1/docs.

And when clicking the "New Comment" link at the bottom of an episode -- 731744 in this example -- it tries to load http:/~addventure/cgi-bin/comform.html?room=731744

Yes, http: followed by only one slash.

Really, I haven't mentioned this before because I was waiting either for someone else to mention it (but I guess I'm the only Mac/Safari user here) or for the issue to be fixed by a Safari update (but Safari just got a major update, and the issue continues).

I don't know how involved it would be to fix the code, or if it would even be possible -- I'll certainly understand if it can't be made to work.  It would just be nice and convenient, since I use Safari as my regular browser, if the Addventure could be made fully compatible. (I literally keep Firefox on my computer solely for the somewhat rare occasions in which I want to add a new episode or comment.)

[Adama]

Hm... that's not something I was aware of.  Unfortunately I don't have a Mac, so I can't really test...

So for some reason Safari is dropping the domain name from its URLs?  Most links in the Addventure Utility apps are _relative_ links of the form "/~addventure...".  It's as if for some reason, Safari doesn't realize that they're "relative" URLs so it doesn't know that it needs to stick the domain name on the front?  Maybe Safari doesn't like to see a slash at the start of a relative reference?

Some explanation about the URLs; the form of the Addventure CGI URLs has always bothered me, but it seems to be demanded by the nature of the software (CGI apps under Apache) though I don't know why.  The latter half of the URL -- /~adventure/game1/docs -- is telling it what the working directory for the CGI app should be.  This feels like a non-standard usage to me, but what do I know?  But it may be a non-standard (or merely archaic) usage that IE and Firefox still support, but Safari doesn't.

Any other Safari users out there who have some suggestions?

Thanks,

[Adama]

If you manually put //www.bearchive.com back into the URL, does it work?

[gonZo]

Looks like that works.

Catfish, the proper form for those links should be:
http://www.bearchive.com/~addventure/cgi-bin/newproc.cgi/~addventure/game1/docs
http://www.bearchive.com/~addventure/cgi-bin/comform.html?room=731744

[Catfish]

Manually adding that does seem to work as a workaround. Thanks, Adama and gonZo.

It is a very odd situation, since I haven't seen this issue with any other site, even ones that seem to be using similar CGI links.

[Adama]

I was wondering if any Safari users out there knew of something I could change on the server, or in the links, that would fix the situation.

I tried removing the slash at the start of the link in case that was the problem, but then the links stopped working in Firefox...

[gonZo]

Hm... that's not something I was aware of.  Unfortunately I don't have a Mac, so I can't really test...

So for some reason Safari is dropping the domain name from its URLs?  Most links in the Addventure Utility apps are _relative_ links of the form "/~addventure...".  It's as if for some reason, Safari doesn't realize that they're "relative" URLs so it doesn't know that it needs to stick the domain name on the front?  Maybe Safari doesn't like to see a slash at the start of a relative reference?

Some explanation about the URLs; the form of the Addventure CGI URLs has always bothered me, but it seems to be demanded by the nature of the software (CGI apps under Apache) though I don't know why.  The latter half of the URL -- /~adventure/game1/docs -- is telling it what the working directory for the CGI app should be.  This feels like a non-standard usage to me, but what do I know?  But it may be a non-standard (or merely archaic) usage that IE and Firefox still support, but Safari doesn't.

Any other Safari users out there who have some suggestions?

Thanks,

You're right: Safari doesn't seem to understand that the /~ links should be appended to the current domain. I don't know whether that's a shortcoming of Safari or a non-standard linking method in the code. I can see the portability advantage in coding it that way, though.

[Adama]

I bet it's a problem with using the tilde (~) character in the URL... unfortunately that's how all BEA pages work.  I notice that it may not a problem on the BEA's main page because that uses absolute links (that include the domain name) rather than relative links.

I'm reluctant to hardcode the domain name in all Addventure pages... mainly because over 700,000 "unused options" pages would need to be updated, but also because the BEA's domain name has changed before (we used to be www3.bearchive.com for a while!) and might again.

More research required... anyone else have ideas?

[Adama]

Hey Catfish -- or anybody else who has a Safari browser -- can you test something for me?

Go here, to the Utilities page: http://www.bearchive.com/~addventure/game1/docs/1.html#stats

I've copied the "Version and Statistics on this Game" link so that it uses an encoded tilde (%7e) rather than an actual tilde.  The top link is the old version, and the bottom link is the new version.

See if
1) the top (old) link fails to work,
2) the bottom (new) link works.
If it works, it should take you to the "About this game" page.

I found some documentation which says that the original spec for URLs stated that tildes had to be encoded.  Apparently IE and Firefox let you get away with not doing that, but maybe Safari and Chrome don't.

Try it and let us know here...

[gonZo]

Both links work for me, but I'm using a very recent version of Safari, so others' mileage may vary.

[Adama]

Both links work for me, but I'm using a very recent version of Safari, so others' mileage may vary.

Have you seen the problem with some other Addventure link we can test with?

[Catfish]

Both links work for me, but I'm using a very recent version of Safari, so others' mileage may vary.

I agree with gonZo here -- I assume we're both using Safari 6.0 (the update that was released Wednesday along with the "Mountain Lion" OS).

[Adama]

Damn, it's not the tilde at all, is it.  Now I'm thinking it's the fact that the relative URL has "http:" in front of it for new episodes / comments, but it doesn't have it on the "About" link I was asking you to try.

That actually makes more sense, since any URL with "http:" in front of it is SUPPOSED to be a absolute reference, not a relative one.

Catfish, I created a test episode here: http://www.bearchive.com/~addventure/game1/docs/130/130465.html -- I hand-modified the "Add comment" link to fix the above issue; can you try to add a comment to it to see whether it works in Safari?

[gonZo]

That works! (As Catfish says, he and I are both using MacOS version 6.0 of Safari.)

[Adama]

And you can't add comments to regular episodes either?  (Just being thorough)

[gonZo]

No. Safari isn't supplying the domain for the relative links.

[Adama]

All right, I will change the code so that future create-episode and add-comment links don't use the "http:" prefix.  I don't think I can muster the energy to go back and modify all those hundreds of thousands of old links (or to write an app to do it).

[gonZo]

I wouldn't do it, either.

[Adama]

All right, I will change the code so that future create-episode and add-comment links don't use the "http:" prefix.  I don't think I can muster the energy to go back and modify all those hundreds of thousands of old links (or to write an app to do it).

The code has now been changed.  Safari users should now be able to add onto and comment on new episodes.  I also discovered that the same problem occurs with Android browsers, so those are fixed too.

Hopefully this will not break any browsers that were working before this.  If it does, we'll have to figure something else out...

Thanks for your help, gonZo!  And thanks for letting me know, Catfish.

[Catfish]

Thanks for the fix!

As I said, I probably should have mentioned this a long time ago...