107293 - stuff between '<' and '>' should never be explicitly displayed in browser

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Core :: DOM: HTML Parser, defect)

Description

[Travis Crump]

It was my impression that both '<' and '>' were special charcters in html and as
such neither themselves nor text contained between them should ever be displayed
by the browser and that escape codes were necessary to get them to display. 
Despite this when I go to some pages html code is displayed(ie <FONT SIZE="1"
FACE="Verdana, sans-serif"> shows up in browser).  Because of Bug 55583, the
cause is hard to pinpoint, because if you do the following steps:
1)On malformed page, view the source.
2)From source view, click save as ...
3) open this saved file with Mozilla
The page then displays correctly...
It also displays correctly if you just do Save page as without viewing source
and then open this saved file.

The cause that I can come up with is that for some reason(to use same example as
above) the </FONT> part's packet is either lost or doesn't arrive by the time
that that part of the page is displayed.  While it would be preferrable that
this cause was fixed, this might be more difficult since 'my cause' is not
necessary the true cause of the problem.  Therefore it might be better right now
to fix the symptom and prevent html code from being displayed since usually for
me this is worse than the html formatting not being applied(ie all the code
screws up the formatting of the width of tables making it a much bigger eyesore...)

Comment 1

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

care to provide a URL on which you see this?

Comment 2

[Travis Crump]

I see it on www.shadowmarch.com in the UBB bulletin board portion and have seen
it on www.soccernet.com, but I think that is mainly because these are sites I
visit more regularly.  I am relatively positive that I have seen it elsewhere as
well I just can't remember specific urls.  It is the kind of thing that happens
maybe one out of every 20 or 30 times I visit a site and hitting reload will
usually fix it.  I have a very crappy high-latency 56k modem connection which
may or may not precipitate the bug.  The fact that it is a one out of 30 type
thing inclines me to blame the browser.  The www.shadowmarch.com UBB html in
particular is generated on the fly so if it was a 100% failure rate than I'd
blame the site, but since it is more like a 5% failure rate for essentially the
same code on every try...

Comment 3

[Travis Crump]

Attachment: this is a zoomed in screen shot of what I am talking about

Comment 4

[Travis Crump]

Attachment: another zoomed in screenshot, this time of http://espn.go.com/main.html to show it is not domain specific, last screenshot was of www.shadowmarch.com

Comment 5

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

Parser...

Comment 6

[Jaagup Irve]

Seeing this also on Win98. Should be related to incremental reloads. I am using 
a DSL connection though.

Comment 7

[Henno Buschmann]

It is not only, that Mozilla shows the code. It isn't interpreted too.

I have seen it at http://www.c-plusplus.de/ubb/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi very
often. Its also an UBB Board, but the HTML Code is heavy modified by me.

Comment 8

[harishd]

Sorry guys I'm not able to reproduce the problem ( FYI: I've seen a similar problem
in a different site but wasn't able to reproduce ). Without a good testcase it
is extemely hard to pin point the problem. Marking bug future for now.

This bug has been marked "future" because the original netscape engineer working 
on this is over-burdened. If you feel this is an error, that you or another
known resource will be working on this bug,or if it blocks your work in some way 
-- please attach your concern to the bug for reconsideration -----

Comment 9

[Christopher Hoess (gone)]

*** Bug 103494 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 10

[Jaagup Irve]

Attachment: an img tag displayed to user (note strange stripes)

Using 200220410
http://www.minut.ee/ quite often shows the bug. It is not fool proof, but I was
able to reproduce it with about 1:4 ratio there (. I have seen anything from
<td> and <table> to the attached <img> tag displayed on page.

As a note, this is the only Mozilla bug I see frequently.

Comment 11

[Christopher Hoess (gone)]

*** Bug 135479 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 12

[Jaagup Irve]

I'd like to make a comment that I have not seen this bug occur a long time.
Since 1.1a probably. What about the other reporters?

Comment 13

[Jaagup Irve]

This bug should be marked fixed, I dont't have the privileges and the problem
reported here has been gone for months already. Thank you.

Comment 14

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

marking so.