Broken spoiler tags? Here's a fix

[HusKy]

TL;DR Do not use emojis in posts with spoiler tags or they will be broken in specific scenarios.

 

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Every so often I stumbled upon a broken spoiler tag -- the content of the spoiler could not be viewed.

Decided to take a look today and it looks like certain content inside your post (anywhere, not just inside a spoiler tag) will break the spoiler functionality.

 

From my testing: specific emojis break the spoiler tag.

To fix your post with spoiler tags, simply remove emojis.

These emojis cannot be included anywhere in your post, not just spoiler tag.

 

Any emoji from this emoji picker will break spoiler tag -- except for emojis inside "PSNProfiles" category at the bottom:

 

Unicode emojis that are mapped to images inside this emoji picker will break it as well. Don't use them in posts with spoiler tags.

 

There might be some other culprit which I haven't fully figured out so take this "fix" with a grain of salt.

 

edit.

Another odd behaviour: if I visit forum thread page directly, spoiler tag is broken. But if I visit page 2, then go to page 1, spoiler tag works.

If the post does not contain emojis, it works every time.

 

edit 2.

Another observation: opening posts are not affected by this issue.

Example: ?

Spoiler

This one works.

 

edit 3.

Posting a reply will magically fix the spoilers as well.

 

edit 4.

See my reply below with broken spoiler tag.

Edited July 1, 2022 by HusKy

[DonFrancesco]

I'll add my two cents to this, since I've encountered the "broken" spoiler tags a few days ago myself for the first time. When it happened I had just text and "minuses" in them (sorry if that's not what it's really called, but what I mean is this: "-"), no emojis whatsoever. Yet I somehow couldn't open the spoiler tags anymore after posting, and apparently nor could anyone else. I didn't really think of it afterwards, but now that the discussion has come up, I went back to that exact post and tried opening the formerly broken spoiler tags, and now it works properly. So it doesn't seem to be a permanent issue.

 

On the other hand I just posted a text in spoiler tags a few hours ago that contained this ? emoji, but I can still open and close them as normal. At the moment I don't really have an explanation or suggestion as to why this is, but I thought I'd share it nonetheless. Maybe we'll end up figuring it out.

[HusKy]

Let's see if this this emoji breaks the spoiler tag: ?

 

Spoiler

Hello there

 

edit. Heureka! The spoiler tag above is broken for me in Chrome, Firefox and Safari after fresh page load. Let me know if you can open it.

 

@DonFrancesco I think the reason why it worked for you is that you visited the thread on page 2, then went back to page 1 and that makes them work. Somehow.

Edited July 1, 2022 by HusKy

[Mori]

I can't open your spoiler tag Husky. When I click it, my page jumps to the top.

 

edit: Welp, as soon as I posted, your spoiler tag opens for me.

Edited July 1, 2022 by Mori

[DonFrancesco]

 

8 minutes ago, HusKy said:

Let's see if this this emoji breaks the spoiler tag:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Hello there

 

edit. Heureka! The spoiler tag above is broken for me in Chrome, Firefox and Safari. Let me know if you can open it.

 

Nope ? Can't open it. It's still strange, though, that it seems so inconsistent... 

 

And also oof! I just tested it and you're right, when I go straight to page one of the thread I can't open the tag with the emoji in it! It only works when I go there from page 2. But I'm still puzzled about the first spoiler tags, because, as I said, they do not contain any emojis, and yet as I tried it now, going directly to page 1 instead of from 2 to 1, they won't open either. And I would think that this "-" shouldn't break a spoiler tag and it should be similar to other punctuation marks, so... what is going on with this?

 

Edit: After reading @Mori's post, I tried it again and what do you know... now it works. It must have something to do with refreshing the page, I guess.

 

(Also as a random sidenote, Mori, your status "Würstchengulasch" gave me one hell of a throwback to Terranigma, so thanks for that ?)

Edited July 1, 2022 by DonFrancesco

[HusKy]

34 minutes ago, Mori said:

edit: Welp, as soon as I posted, your spoiler tag opens for me.

 

Yes, posting a reply or switching between pages in threads (mentioned in edit1) seems to trigger some sort of refresh that re-enables those click triggers.

Edited July 1, 2022 by HusKy

[Mori]

8 minutes ago, DonFrancesco said:

(Also as a random sidenote, Mori, your status "Würstchengulasch" gave me one hell of a throwback to Terranigma, so thanks for that )

 

I don't know the game and I am puzzled how Würstchengulasch is connected to it.  But I am glad it did sth. for you.  

 

Sorry dont mean to derail the thread

Edited July 1, 2022 by Mori

[HusKy]

OK, I think I figured it out. Some technical info below:

 

The forum software translates unicode emojis to image files, probably for better compatibility with old software/operating systems.

This is what the unicode emoji looks like on Windows 10:

 

When they do the translation, they embed images like this:

 

Here's what the markup looks like:

Notice the URL which is missing protocol -- this is called protocol-relative URL.

 

My guess: The image URL breaks the client side parser that handles spoiler tags.

 

edit. Never mind, this is not the culprit.

 

Edited July 1, 2022 by HusKy

[Evil_Joker88]

I could open the first spoiler tag but not the second one. After reading all posts in this thread i tried to open the spoiler in the quoted message and it worked. After that i tried the 2nd spoiler in its original post and it opens now too. I'm using Firefox on my Phone (Galaxy A50).

 

It's annoying but every now and then i couldn't open a spoiler so thx @HusKy for showing some infos and solutions