273323 - nytimes.com - unclosed user-defined tags break rendering pre-1.8

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Tech Evangelism Graveyard :: English US, defect)

Description

[russell bell]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20041001 Firefox/0.10.1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20041001 Firefox/0.10.1


	When an alt-code metatag appears inside an emphasized region
it 'masks' the closing tag.  For example, this paragraph:

	<p><em><IMG
	src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/dropcap/w.gif"
	width="46" height="33" align="left" border="0" alt="W">hen I
	inquired at a clinic about a test for herpes simplex 2, the
	doctor asked why I'd want to know, since even condoms would
	not provide 100 percent protection against transmitting
	it. "What are you going to do with the knowledge?" he asked
	rhetorically. He said he was newly divorced and back on the
	dating scene and would not want to know whether he had the
	disease. What do you think?  T.G.W., <alt-code idsrc="nyt-geo"
	value="Vancouver (British Columbia)"/>Vancouver</em> </p>


	<p>
	I think I wouldn't want to date this doctor. And that he might
	want to consider a different specialty: some kind of yardwork,
	perhaps.  </p>

from http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/05/magazine/05ETHICIST.html.
Firefox emphasizes everything after the initial <em>, even the portion
after the </em>, unless I remove the <alt-code idsrc="nyt-geo"
value="Vancouver (British Columbia)"/>.

The same happens if I change the tag to strong, so I presume it does the same
for all text-style attributes but I have not checked.

Thanks for your attention.

russell bell


Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.Go to that page or use my example extract.
2.
3.

Actual Results:  
Emphasized non-emphasized text.

Expected Results:  
Displayed the stuff outside the <em></em> as not emphasized.

Comment 1

[Phil Ringnalda (:philor)]

Offhand, I'd say someone needs to evangelize the NYT about how to properly close
invalid/unknown tags in HTML, since <foo /> only closes a tag in X(HT)ML, but
there are more things in heaven and Core:Parser than are dreamt of...

Although the original URL doesn't currently seem to have the <alt-code /> tag,
googling "alt-code idsrc" shows that they sometimes do, and people apparently
somehow manage to copy-paste them.

Comment 2

[Blake Kaplan (:mrbkap) (inactive)]

This sounds like it's a dupe of bug 256731. I'll leave this open in the case
that someone wants to morph this into a TE bug.

Comment 3

[Phil Ringnalda (:philor)]

Oops, completely forgot to check in a modern Gecko. Still, n million Firefox
users say "yes, please, -->TE."

Comment 4

[Chris Lawson (gone)]

Is the NYT still doing this? I don't see it in the given URL any more.

Comment 5

[russell bell]

I haven't seen it happen in a long while.  They fixed that page pretty
soon - they often fix errors in their web pages.  I thought Firefox should
handle it:  I usually use Lynx:  it does.

Comment 6

[Chris Lawson (gone)]

INCOMPLETE due to lack of activity since the end of 2009.

If someone is willing to investigate the issues raised in this bug to determine whether they still exist, *and* work with the site in question to fix any existing issues, please feel free to re-open and assign to yourself.

Sorry for the bugspam; filter on "NO MORE PRE-2010 TE BUGS" to remove.