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Posted by jpluimers on 2025/11/20
A longer while I ago, I could not find a URL that would bring up the BKSY post pop-up.
A while ago, I found out there is a compose intent URL: you can even add a text parameter with URL-encoded content!
[Wayback/Archive] Cory LaViska: “ooh you can create intent links for Bluesky” — Bluesky
[Wayback/Archive] bafkreig4tmnf44akrfnqvuvinsj6pkg4zsosu5uivwpgqypkpgree247xq@jpeg (1000×425)
The below queries revealed various other posts indicating the same:
Posted in Development, Encoding, HTML, Software Development, URL Encoding, Web Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/10/17
It looks like I missed that Google has added a new URL parameter to its search engine quite a while ago.
In the past, you could turn on image search using the tbm=isch URL parameter (“to be matched” and “image search”).
That still works, but there is a new parameter on the block that is officially undocumented, and can be used to switch into various search modes including image search but also AI-less search.
This drastically lowers the carbon footprint and also gets you far less speculative information.
Edit 20251023: I forgot to save the below part before the scheduled post got published. So here we go
Posted in AI and ML; Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning, Chrome, Chrome, Chromium, Development, Edge, Firefox, Google, Google AI, GoogleSearch, LLM, Mastodon, Power User, Reddit, SocialMedia, Software Development, Twitter, URL Encoding, Web Browsers | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/03/05
I originally searched for the tables below to see if I could get the visualisations of TeX and LaTeX right for infinite loop in “LaTeX: A Document Preparation System” by Leslie Lamport, printed in 1994..
Didn’t work, neither did using plain html super and subscript. The only thing that worked was using CSS styles (I chose to embed them, as separate CSS files are a huge premium over the WordPress plan), which also preserves actual meaning for screen readers:
Posted in accessibility (a11y), CSS, Development, HTML, Power User, Software Development, Unicode, URL Encoding, User Experience (ux), Web Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2014/02/20
Since the time that spaces are allowed in path and file names, it has caused confusion.
I personally like the readability of spaces, but still tend to avoid them as they usually cause more harm than the readability gains.
An interesting thread about spaces in file names is operating systems – What technical reasons exist for not using space characters in file names? – Super User.
In URLs, you there are various kinds of places where spaces can be used. You have to escape as Xah Lee wonders in does HTTP protocol require space be encoded in file path?.
The escaping is part of the URL Encoding, but the escapes depends on the position of the space. In the query part (after the first ?), you can have it escaped by both %20 and plus sign, but in the path part (before the first ? sign), it can only have a %20.
This is explained by bobince in urlencode – when to encode space to plus (+) and when to %20? – Stack Overflow.
That escaping basically makes path and file names a lot less readable when passed as a URL. It causes posts like these:
But why can you still use spaces when you type a URL in your web browser, or use it in a href, src or other HTML URL attribute?
Xah Lee rightfully earlier wondered about that in webserver – space in url; did browser got smarter or server? – Stack Overflow.
Technically, both are not allowed. But web browser manufacturers understand we humans are lazy, and accommodate for that by encoding these when putting them into the HTTP request.
You can type “https://www.google.com/search?q=foo bar” in your web browser, and depending on the browser, it gets translated into either one of these:
Recap:
–jeroen
via:
Posted in Development, Encoding, HTML, Software Development, URL Encoding, Web Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2010/04/09
A while ago, I asked a question on percentage expansion in batch-files on superuser.com: a great site with great answers, similar to stackoverflow.com and serverfault.com , but now for asking “Power User” kind of questions.
The percentage sign (%) in URL‘s is to escape (or URLencode) characters that should not be in a URL itself.
(Note that the old new thing had a very interesting article on URL encoding: there are many different opinions on how to to this ‘right’, and a few of these ‘right’ opinions are not always compatible with each other).
In Windows batch-files and the command-line, the percentage sign is used to expand environment variables, arguments and for loop indexes.
To make life ‘easier’, inside a batch-file, the percentage sign has a slightly different meaning than on the command-line itself.
This can break your batch-files when you use URL encoded parameters.
It does not matter if these parameters are quoted or not: cmd.exe expands them, unless you escape them properly.
So, the command for downloading the URL with wget (similar to curl) differs from running it on the plain command-line or in a batch-file.
So the best way to escape percentages in batch files is to double them: each % becomes %%.
There is even a very old (MS-DOS era!) knowledge base article about this topic, that I just found when doing the research for this blog article :-)
As a sidenote: manually decode thesed escaped URL’s is always a pain.
There are many sites that can do URL decoding on-line.
PS: This was the original question: How can I stop percentage expansion in a batch file? – Super User.
Posted in *nix, Batch-Files, CommandLine, Development, Encoding, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, URL Encoding, wget | 3 Comments »
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 