Extra characters in cache logs and elsewhere

[Nylimb]

Often, when I post a find for a cache, my cache log has an extra character (usually a letter or an extra period) at the end which I didn't type. If I subsequently edit the log, I can usually make the character go away, but it may take several tries.

 

The same thing sometimes happens when I post to the Geocaching forums. For example, I just now posted a message entitled "Font size in new search pages", which has an extra "l" at the end.

 

I'm using Netscape Communicator 4.77 on an iMac.

 

Does anyone know if this is a bug in Netscape, or in the geocaching software?h

[+Kite and Hawkeye]

This is a Netscape 4.7 issue -- it doesn't play nice with Unicode, which is.. uh, some font-encoding thing that's all the rage these days. I'm not a technical person. The only escape is not to use Netscape 4.7. I've switched to IE (shudder, yeah), for that reason and because an increasing number of sites don't render properly in 4.7, which also doesn't play nice with some HTML standards. The new gc.com is coming out with unreadably tiny fonts in my 4.7, for example.

 

There's really nothing the site can do about it -- I've never liked to hear "well, get a new browser" as the response to a problem, but in this case? That's about the long and short of it. When I do use Netscape 4.7, I also get extraneous characters at the end of logs. Sometimes adding a bunch of spaces at the end of the log helps. I try not to edit my logs in that browser, either, because not infrequently it inserts a bunch of random spaces in my words. Again, the unicode thing. Unicode is a force for good, not evil, don't get me wrong -- much as I love Netscape, 4.7 was a pretty broken browser. If you can deal with 6.0, it'll fix you up nice. t

[+Kite and Hawkeye]

Ahem. As you can see, I posted that with Netscape 4.7.

[+Mopar]

I use Netscape 4.8 and have none of those problems.

 

Tae-Kwon-Leap is not a path to a door, but a road leading forever towards the horizon.

[Nylimb]

Thanks. I've switched to Netscape 7.0. It solved the font size problem. Presumably it will solve this one too.

[+GrizzlyJohn]

Why is it that people say they hate Internet Explorer but when they switched to it the problem went away? What does that tell you? And about getting a new browser, that is usually because the technology changes. Or in the case of earlier Netscape browser they did not even follow the current standards of the time.

 

Also unicode is used to allow for extended character sets. That is, it assigns a standard way for characters outside of the english language to be used across platforms and languages. So those characters can be used to display information in the users native language.

[Team Dragon]

Both Netscape and IE were pushing ahead of the standards. And when someone has problems with an old browser and moves to a newer one, it doesn't mean that IE is better than Netscape, it means that the newer is better than the old. I've never heard a Mozilla user say they were going to switch to IE.

[+GrizzlyJohn]

Actually I use about 5 different browsers and various versions of those browsers. I have been using several browsers for about 8 years. I can choose any browser for my own use and I would choose nothing but IE. That is the only browser I have installed on my own PC. I use them all for testing so I have seen them all work and not work. I have always found IE to support current standards at the time of its release. I can't say the same for other browsers. I have seen applications break other browsers while IE just works as expected. All browsers may have pushed ahead of the standards but I have to worry about supporting current standards. So I can't really say that I am a Mozilla user and switched to IE, I can only say that Mozilla has done nothing to convince me to switch from IE.