Clickable links not working correctly

Describe the bug

Clickable links sometimes produce Error 404 (Page not found) or don't do anything at all by the receiving station. Copy/paste of the link by the receiving station opens the page correctly.

To Reproduce

https://flic.kr/p/2pwrWko should open a picture of my shack. The receiving station reported the picture did not open and an error 404 was not reported. They were running VarAC V8.4.4 / VARA HF v4.8.3 as was I.

Expected behavior

Photo should open on receiving station's browser.

Screenshots of issue

N/A

Screenshots of settings

N/A

PC info

Windows 11.

VarAC version

VarAC V8.4.4

VARA HF version

VARA HF v4.8.3

Additional context

What I have done for about a year is send links to photos as a means so stimulating discussions. I find it more interesting to show a photo of my shack than just to say I have a Yaesu FTDX10. I recently upgraded to Windows 11 and simulateously to VarAC V8.4.4 / VARA HF v4.8.3 and noticed an inconsistent behavior in whether a user could see the photo. Oddly, some photos worked fine but another photo that was hosted on the same site with same filetype wouldn't open. I changed the hosting service from Imgur to Flkr which did not solve the problem. Thus, while there are other possibilities, it certainly possible that there is a behavior change possibly in the most recent version of VarAC. I haven't been able to determine a direct cause -> effect. Just to be clear, "sending" a photo in this manner isn't intended to substitute for the ability to compress and send the actual photo which is also a terrific capability of VarAC.

2 comments

2 Comments

irad d

Feb 05

Hi Mark.

I was not able to reproduce. works well here.

Are you sure you did not add any sign before or after the URL (Like an ending period of a sentence)

To repeoduce I'll need to know what URL it opened on the other side once clicked (what is presented in the URL row on the upper bar of the broswer. to see if VarAC on his end did not cope/pasted the URL well...

Please try to reproduce with someone and let me know what URL is being used on the receiving side (ask him)

73s

Irad

Mark Rosneck

Replying to

Thanks Irad. Latest QSO with a station running VarAC V8.4.4 / VARA HF v4.8.3 was able to open the link. I'm not completely sure but since the link isn't highlighted in the message window, people might not understand that it's clickable and this whole thing might be confusing them. Maybe it's working but they don't know they can just click on it (although I put "CLICK LINK FOR PHOTO" in the text I send.) Maybe they just click on the highlighted line and think that's supposed to work. I don't believe there's anything in the documentation on clickable links, BTW. Anyway, I'll fiddle with it further and see if I can get some sort of correlation with something.