BUG: Fragment Identifiers Ignored for Links on UTF-8 pages

 Last reviewed: March 17, 1998
Article ID: Q182501
The information in this article applies to:
  • Microsoft Internet Explorer (Programming), versions 4.0, 4.01

SYMPTOMS

Hyperlinks that use fragment identifiers ("#fragment") on the URL to identify a specific location in the target resource will fail in Internet Explorer 4.0, 4.01 (IE 4.0x) for UTF-8 pages, sometimes with the following error message: 

   Internet explorer cannot open the Internet site <garbage>.
   Make sure the address is correct and try again."

CAUSE

IE 4.0x parses URLs with embedded "#" symbols incorrectly for the UTF-8 code page.

RESOLUTION

The only available workaround at this time is to use an alternative character set (charset).

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a bug in the Microsoft products listed at the beginning of this article. We are researching this bug and will post new information here in the Microsoft Knowledge Base as it becomes available.

MORE INFORMATION

The following HTML demonstrates the problem: 

   <HTML>
   <HEAD>
      <META http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
      <TITLE>Repro of UTF-8 Fragment Failure Bug</TITLE>
   </HEAD>
   <BODY>
      <A HREF="#subloc1">Jump down</A>
      <!-- ... bunch of BR's ... -->
      <A NAME=subloc1>Many lines down</A>
   </BODY>
   </HTML>
Activating the hyperlink in this document generates the symptoms described in this article--nothing happens or an error message box is shown. With the correct behavior, Internet Explorer should scroll the document down to the sub-location within the document.

In IE 4.0x, a page can be specified as UTF-8 in multiple ways such as the following:

  • With a META tag in the HTML document (as demonstrated above)
  • Via HTTP Content-Type header added by CGI EXE or ISAPI DLL
  • By specifying a default charset in the IE Fonts Dialog

All methods result in the bug described in this article.

REFERENCES

HTML 4.0 RFC 1866, subsection 7.4: 

   http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/links.html#h-12.1.1

Additional query words: hash bookmark #
Keywords : kberrmsg
Technology : kbInetDev internet
Version : WINDOWS:4.0,4.01
Platform : WINDOWS
Issue type : kbbug

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Last reviewed: March 17, 1998
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