tiny, but interesting bug

[+PISA-caching]

When I go to the profile page and enter the username of a different WM user manually (type the name on my keyboard) and hit Submit, the website says "Member Name is Unknown", but when I copy the name somewhere and then paste it into the form and hit Submit, the website shows the profile of that user. I tried that with different usernames and it seems to be the same all the time. Pasting is good, typing is bad? :-) Interestingly, when I type the name and hit Submit and get the error message and hit Submit again (without changing the username) the website suddenly accepts the username.

 

I made a few more tests and I noticed that the error message only appears in MS Internet Explorer 8.0

 

Mozilla Firefox 8.0 returns no error ever, no matter if I type the name or paste it.

[+Max and 99]

When I go to the profile page and enter the username of a different WM user manually (type the name on my keyboard) and hit Submit, the website says "Member Name is Unknown", but when I copy the name somewhere and then paste it into the form and hit Submit, the website shows the profile of that user. I tried that with different usernames and it seems to be the same all the time. Pasting is good, typing is bad? :-) Interestingly, when I type the name and hit Submit and get the error message and hit Submit again (without changing the username) the website suddenly accepts the username.

 

I made a few more tests and I noticed that the error message only appears in MS Internet Explorer 8.0

 

Mozilla Firefox 8.0 returns no error ever, no matter if I type the name or paste it.

 

Interesting observation. A fellow geocacher got me to switch to Firefox for exactly the type of reason you described. Weird things were happening that suddenly went away when I used Firefox.

[+PISA-caching]

:-) I just did some more testing, and it seems that the difference isn't between typing and pasting the username, but between hitting the Enter key after typing it and klicking on the Submit button with the mouse. The Submit button has an onclick event that starts a different javascript function than the one that is started if the form is submitted otherwise. Riddle solved. :-)