287573 - clicking on link for Ebay item in Inbox of Hotmail.com leads to error on page loaded

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Core :: General, defect)

Description

[chiuzhongliang]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.6) Gecko/20050225 Firefox/1.0.1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.6) Gecko/20050225 Firefox/1.0.1

When I read favorite search e-mails from Ebay in hotmail.com and try to click on
the item for sale being reported, I always get "invalid item" page.  However,
when I open the same email in Internet Explorer or Avant Browser, I have no
problem--the item for sale is clickable and definitely NOT invalid.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.   Open hotmail
2.   Go Ebay favorite search emal
3.   Click on search result

Actual Results:  
 I get an  "invalid item" Ebay page

Expected Results:  
  Gone to the Ebay page with the specific item being sold

Comment 1

[wwj101]

I have a similar problem. When I try to access an ebay item - on which there is
an active bid - by clicking on a link in an email sent to me by ebay, the link
comes up as invalid, but this is not the case when Internet Explorer is used.

Comment 2

[Simon Gainey]

It apperas that this is only a bug when going via a proxy server

Comment 3

[John P]

I've figured that this bug is caused by improper URL encoding.  I'm not on a
proxy server.  Therefore,
"http://contact.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?M2MContact&item=6800434310&requested=Ebayuser
etc. turns into
"http://contact.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?M2MContact%26amp;item%3d6800434310%26amp;requested%3dEbayuser
etc.
 Ebay reads the URL up to the first bunch of symbols it doesn't understand, and
then shoots you to an error page.


I know that hotmail recently changed over to making links in emails accessible
via a Javascript pop-up, which may have something to do with it.  I can
reproduce it every time.

Comment 4

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Simon, wwj101, chiuzhongliang - you didn't provide the failing link from the
email (URL) ... add a comment to the bug

Comment 5

[bignstinky]

Summary above is acute. But works with Internet Explorer. I can only use Int.
Exp. when I look up ebay links in my inbox.

Comment 6

[Ryan Grange]

I have just found that I am unable to use links from Hotmail that contain the ampersand (&) in them when I access Hotmail via Firefox.  We got clued in by customer complaints.  Accessing the emails to Hotmail via Internet Explorer handle the ampersands just fine.  It doesn't matter if I send the email with ampersands encoded (&) or not (&).  The links still fail.  In Firefox, the URL reached shows the ampersand as still being encoded.

Perhaps it isn't the rendering, but the Javascript, that lies at the heart of this particular problem.

Comment 7

[Jon]

Hotmail turns this link:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=8036856035&ssPageName=ADME:B:SS:US:1
into:
javascript:ol('http://us.ebayobjects.com/2c;7383084;8891932;y?http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem%26amp;item%3d8036856035%26amp;ssPageName%3dADME:B:SS:US:1');

The link is the same on either IE or Firefox, but IE follows the link correctly, Firefox ends up at:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=8036856035&ssPageName=ADME:B:SS:US:1

Comment 8

[Ian]

The javascript function "ol" is located in the file called hotmail___1025000102.js or something similar and performs the following task. 
 
function ol(u)
{
window.open(u,"_blank");
}

Using the code above to convert "ol" to the url give you the following:

javascript:window.open('http://us.ebayobjects.com/2c;7383084;8891932;y?http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem%26amp;item%3d8036856035%26amp;ssPageName%3dADME:B:SS:US:1',"_blank");

If you past this as a URL in the browser, it works in IE and fails in Mozilla.

Problem seems to be related to the windows.open command parsing the url  differently between ie and mozilla.

Comment 9

[Niels van Lochem]

I am having the same problem, only with my own js-code. It's a nasty bug for people trying to comply their code to the W3C standards...

When using a function for opening new windows, firefox seems to directly pass the url-string withouth parsing it. Because of this, the user will be sent to a not existing page. 

--- This will not work ---
function openNewWindow() 
    {
        window.open('out.php?out=1&lnk_id=5');
    }

<a href="#" onclick="openNewWindow();">Open link</a>

--- This will work ---
<a href='#' onclick="window.open('out.php?out=1&amp;lnk_id=5');">Open link</a>

In the first case, the addressbar also does not the path to the page (e.g. it should be http://thesite/out.php?out=1&lnk_id=5. The url firefox comes up with is: out.php?out=1&amp;lnk_id=5).

This bug is still active in firefox 2.0 and the nightly build of Gran Paradiso (dated 1th of april, 2007). 

Comment 11

[Bob Wombacher]

I am having the same problem as mentioned above.   It is adding "amp" into the URL string for the item to be searched.   This is as of September 8, 2007.

Comment 12

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Bob, do you still see this?

Comment 13

[Ekanan Ketunuti]

Resolved per whiteboard.