Thread

(This was mentioned in the lounge, but I want to bring it up here just in case something can be done on the ExpressionEngine side.)

When updating templates and, less often, posting new entries, garbage characters sometimes appear, such as &∓, &m, &t. Most often they appear at the very top of the template/post as the first characters. Also, sometimes close brackets will convert to single or double semi-colons anywhere in the text—which has a harsh effect on some code, unlike the other spurious text which causes only cosmetic problems. These unexpected text changes do not occur consistently, but I have seen them happen a half-dozen or more times in a row.

The fix—such as it is—is to simply change the text back and hope that on update new unasked-for changes do not appear.

In the Lounge, others have connected this specifically to Safari 3.0b latest, which is what I was using when having this problem. I recently updated to the very latest build of EE 1.60 and installed the Askismet and Bad Behavior extensions; it seems—but I cannot be certain—that these problems did not occur when I was using 1.52 and Safari 3.0b, but I perhaps I simply did not notice (though I do not find any incorrect pages now). Already installed were these plugins that make changes to text: XML Encode, Replace String, EE Typography, URl and Email Auto-linker.

Any ideas?

This happens in 1.5.2.  I had it happen several times, though I was baffled and had no idea why at that point, I thought I had just mistyped something somehow - or blamed my cat, either way.

This is not something EE can handle, but is widely reported for the Safari beta. 

I would highly recommend reverting to 2.0 if you’re working with production systems.  The Safari 3 beta has an uninstaller that makes it painless.

I just want to note this issue myself - I’ve seen it on Safari 3.0 and the latest Firefox on the Mac, and a few days ago, noticed it using the latest Firefox on the PC.

The issues seems to be semi-colons randomly replacing HTML brackets (e.g. <br; instead of
), though I’ve had a few times where I’ve seen other characters at the beginning of the template.

I assume this was a Mac issue until it happened on the PC on Monday - any ideas?  It only happens sometimes, and when updating the template via the EE control panel.

It’s frustrating to spot and only noticed when something doesn’t load properly on the page!

Ste

Safari I can’t test (and sounds like that may be a general Safari 3 issue), but I haven’t run into it on FF on pc.  Do you have any browser plugins installed that might be contributing to it?  And is it at all predicatable- i.e., can you replicate it at will?  Or is it completely random when it happens?  (Random and non-replicatable will be a bear to track down.)