Funny characters

[Bornfree]

Hi Guys,

WHy do i get some funny characters on the address bar?

Something like 20%
any ideas????

[thetestingsite]

%20 is a url encoded space. There are several more, just look at this page for the list of them:

http://i-technica.com/whitestuff/urlencodechart.html

Hope this helps

[Bornfree]

Thanks a lot. so silly of me to put a space in the page name.

[techno_race]

And an explanation of why would be that if you put special characters in the page name, including a space, turn into '%' then the hex code. The hex code for a space is 0020, and % + 20 = %20. You can encode any URL with hex codes by hand, but characters not in the UTF-8 character set are converted automatically. For example, the URL for this page is 'http://www.dynamicdrive.com/forums/showthread.php?t=21909,' which is the smae as 'http://%77%77%77%2E%64%79%6E%61%6D%69%63%64%72%69%76%65%2E%63%6F%6D%2F%66%6F%72%75%6D%73%2F%73%68%6F%77%74%68%72%65%61%64%2E%70%68%70%3F%74%3D%32%31%39%30%39.' A good idea to prevent this is use substitutes in the UTF-8 character set. For example, change ' ' to _, Ꮷ to d,  to OBJ, Ꭰ to D, 𐁘 to X, Ꭱ to R, Ꭲ to T, 𐀦 to Y, Ꭺ to A, Ꭻ to J, Ꭼ to E, Ꭹ to y, Ꭸ to h, Ꭵ to i, Ꮏ to t, Ϲ to C, Ϻ to M, ϻ to m, ϼ to p, ϸ to b, η to n, ο to o, etc.

[Twey]

UTF-8 is a Unicode encoding, meaning that it can represent one of the largest numbers of characters of any encoding. All the "non-UTF-8" characters you've given above are in fact representable by UTF-8.

Only ASCII characters are allowed in URLs, and only some of those. In general, try to avoid anything other than numbers, letters, underscores, and full stops.

Unicode URLs are, in my opinion, one of the most needed upgrades to HTTP for the Web as it is now.