URLs not automatically clickable

noitsnotme

What I did:

Pasted a URL in a post.

What Should happen:

The URL should automatically become a live clickable link without any further interaction.

What happened:

The URL just pasted as un-clickable plain text

Why it matters:

I realise there is a button to make a link clickable but we shouldn’t have to do this. It’s extra steps for no reason. It’s also not intuitive. A casual user with little forum knowledge shouldn’t have to read instructions.

Device/Browser:

iPhone/Safari

masonic

You just need to press Enter or Space after pasting to trigger it being converted to a link. This helps avoid the issue of punctuation being captured as part of the link (Such as http://www.example.com)

noitsnotme

test…

https://www.example.co.uk

Ok, that sort of works, apart from it processing the link into a button as above (I typed https:// www.example.co.uk without the space and then pressed return). So extra steps are still needed if I want it to show the text of the link. I think someone else may have already pointed this out?

noitsnotme

How strange! I’ve come back and the button is gone, my URL is now text. 🤷‍♂️

noitsnotme

Now I'm looking on a PC it is showing as a button again! Very inconsistent behaviour.

masonic

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81866453#Comment_81866453

I can't reproduce that, but I have an observation: the example.co.uk domain isn't actually registered, so it is redirecting to theukdomain.uk

I wonder if this is the origin of the strangeness, since the editor seems to follow the link to get the favicon and site title when rendering the link.

Whereas https://www.example.com is a real website used for testing.

noitsnotme

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81866960#Comment_81866960

On PC/Google Chrome, the link I posted above is always a button. On my phone/Safari, it is sometimes a button, sometimes just text so there appears to be an intermittent bug on Safari.

I would prefer to not have the button rendered by default but I guess that's as per design so I'll have to live with it.

masonic

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81867027#Comment_81867027

If you want a workaround (and can be bothered), you can attach the link to some text in your post, including the url without the https:// for example www.example.com

noitsnotme

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81867047#Comment_81867047

Yes, I realise there is an option to do that, I just think it should be text by default and the option should be to include a button if wanted.

Bridlington1

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81867066#Comment_81867066

Alternatively include a space at the beginning of the text you wish to hyperlinking. E.g if I entered the link below

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6652858/the-top-regular-savers-discussion-thread/p1

To avoid it becoming a button I just highlight it as soon as I've finished typing it then add a space at the beginning or end of the text to display box. This allows you to get a link that's hyperlinked but doesn't become a button (as seen above).

I've done this quite a few times.

Grumpy_chap

Here is an example of a link to another thread in the forum where the link does not work. A reader would need to copy the link to their address bar: