"links" not all working [DVDpedia] weirdly

[sitenoise]

I had that IMDb cast problem so I'm using the latest beta. In my info view, I may have up to 30 links for some entries. Some DVDPedia links to other entries and some web links. And a link to a movie file if I've ripped it to disk.

Now some of the links are "dead"? They don't respond to mousing over or clicking. But if I open the edit window and copy the link I can use it, meaning, they're 'good' links.

What's strange is ... say I have 25 links -- a file, 10 dvdpedia links, and 14 web links. In that order. The first 10 won't work, but 11-25 do.
If I open the edit window and move the bottom 14 to the top and save ... the first 10 of those won't work, but the ones that were at the top not working, when moved to the bottom will work.

Any ideas what's happening?

[Conor]

That is indeed strange. Could you send us two .dcard files for those entries with links that don't work. I know the links are going to be specific to your computer, but I can with that information try to duplicate all the links at home and replicate the bug. To create a .dcard file select the entry in the table and drag it to the Desktop. Do the links work directly from the edit window by using the "view" button (this way I'll know it's a bug in the info view)?

[sitenoise]

That is indeed strange. Do the links work directly from the edit window by using the "view" button (this way I'll know it's a bug in the info view)?

Links do work in Edit window, clicking the "View" button.

[UPDATE] It looks like a bug in "My" info view ... by that I mean, if I choose another 'Info View Style', the links work. I haven't done any tweeking in ages. Still very weird. I'll need to see if I can find the magic number of links that causes it to break ... or find out if there is a magic number. I do know that it's not just the first ten that don't work. If I have 40 links, the first 19 might not work.

I also re-deployed the non-beta app and the same thing happens. This has to be on my end, but as I say, I haven't tweeked my info view template in a long time. And I have never touched the "IFLinks" glob of code. I don't know where to begin. The freakiest thing is that bit about moving the links up or down. It's not the links, it's the position ... but there has to be a threshold number to ignite the weirdness.

[Conor]

The regular links from our templates are not to complicated that they would break after a certain number. They are just link tags wrapped in a list tag. However, it can be very tough to debug the templates as they not the final product. Download this copy of DVDpedia and it will write out the current info view onto your desktop into a file called infoview.html. Then you can use this file to validate it and test the links directly in Safari.

Running it myself I caught a missing space between "span" and "class" inside a tag. Not to mention the fact that I am using XHTML syntax with an HTML doc type and non encoded links, but all this should not affect the links ability to click them. I will do a clean up of these files for an upcoming release (changing the doc type will require testing).

[sitenoise]

Download this copy of DVDpedia and it will write out the current info view onto your desktop into a file called infoview.html. Then you can use this file to validate it and test the links directly in Safari.

The link doesn't seem to work. Is it a version of the app that should only be used for this operation?

I honestly can't say for sure if this is something that has just started happening or not, but I do think I would have noticed it before. I did determine that it seems to be about 20 links that breaks it ... by removing a link at a time until they all begin working. I say "about" because it actually has to go to 19 by removing one at a time, but I do have an entry with 20 that works.

Another data point ... I use a tweeked version of Matt's infoview. I essentially use his "Product Information" area for my "Links". If I use his original to view one of these troublesome entries, it shows the links ok (over on the left), but it throws the "Summary / Comments / Features" and "Credits" into the space below where the "Film Details" are. This might be something you can reproduce. Try his infoview with more than 20 links and see if it freaks out the "Summary / Comments / Features" and "Credits" part of the infoview.

[Conor]

Sorry thinking about the HTML page and thinking about updating to HTML 5 I added ".html" to the link. I have fixed the link to have a proper .zip ending.

Thank you for the tip on Matt's info view. I been thinking about going through all of them and updating them to HTML 5 as well as adding any fixes and general clean up. So I will be sure to try an entry with lots of links.

Do use this version for this debug only, it the same as the current version, but with the writing out of the info view to a file (you don't want to have a infoview.html file appear on your desktop every time you use DVDpedia on a normal regular basis).

[sitenoise]

Thanks Conor. I ran it through the validator and ... ... ... uh ... I think I'll wait until you get a chance to do your thing.

It was total chaos for me. I can live with with this minor issue.

[Conor]

Please do send me your modified template so I can try it out, since the included ones don't have the link problem.