On Thu, Jul 4, 2013 at 10:29 AM, Peter Humphrey <pe...@humphrey.ukfsn.org> wrote: > Sorry to be a nuisance but I can't think of where else to ask. > > On the website I run I have a link to our Twitter profile (or whatever it's > called). This is the link: > > https://twitter.com/TideswellMVC > > If I examine the page using the web host's file editor I see exactly that, > yet if I press CTRL-U in www-client/firefox-17.0.7 it shows this: > > https://twitter.com/#%21/TideswellMVC > > and if I click the link in the main window I'm asked for a login and > password.
Very strange! > Trying the latest Windows version of Firefox in an XP virtual box I get the > unaltered link. I can't tell what version that is because "About Firefox" > merely checks, then tells me I'm up to date. The latest release of Firefox is version 22.0, however version 17 is the latest "Extended Support Release" and coincidentally also the latest stable version in Gentoo. The url "about:" will show the version information in Firefox (and most other browsers). If you want to ensure you are comparing apples to apples, you can download the version 17 ESR Windows installer from: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/all.html > Incidentally, I have a web server running on my LAN with an identical copy > of the site. Using that as the target, rather than the public version, gives > the same results. > > I haven't used JavaScript anywhere. > > What's going on here? I don't know, but here is what I am thinking: A) Does it do the same if you use a different browser? opera or google-chrome are binaries and don't require any compilation, so they might be fast to emerge if you haven't got any other browsers installed. You could also simply use wget or curl to fetch a copy of the page and look at it in a text editor. If other browsers experience the same thing, go to C) B) I would first try to rule out a configuration or plug-in/add-on causing the issue. On the Firefox "Help" menu there is an option to restart with add-ons disabled. This will restart Firefox in "safe mode". Please be aware that it also gives you an option to "Reset Firefox" -- this will reset it to factory default configuration, while supposedly preserving your personal information. I have not actually tried that so I would backup your profile beforehand just in case it goes off the rails. Once you're in safe mode, simply quitting firefox and reopening it will bring it back to normal mode again. If safe mode doesn't help, I would try creating a new profile. You can do this without any effect on your existing profile. Start firefox from shell prompt by "firefox -P" to launch the profile manager. Alternatively, you could login using a different user on your machine. C) If browser or settings don't make a difference, I would ask if you're using any sort of proxy or ad-blocker/parental control/spam filter on your network. That might be silently altering the pages in an unintended way. Also, some employers, ISPs and governments perform content modification on HTTP requests to insert ads or block disallowed URLs. If your web server supports HTTPS I would try fetching the page using that to see if it is the same. That should eliminate the possibility of outside interference as far as manipulation of the page contents goes. D) If this is a website you created, I would ask if you might have your /etc/hosts file pointing at a different server's IP. I have seen a similar problem where someone had their domain name on their web development laptop pointing to a test server rather than the live public server. That's probably not the case since you've experienced the same problem on your local web server, but I thought I would mention it just in case it might spark any ideas if everything else failed to work. Good luck, Paul
