In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
   Jim Nagel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> why does Netsurf take so long to skip to an internal anchor point in
> the same document?  example:

> http://www.spamcop.net/sc?id=z2407631451zf9b8c3284e0a522ca80abdbfd6c81b03z

     The offending bit of the document is the target of that link - shown
below (indented to show the relationships between start and end tags)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 
 1 <a name="report">
 2   <p>
 3     <strong>
 4       Please make sure this email IS spam:
 5     </strong>
 6     <br>
 7     <font face="courier" size=2>
 8       From: "LLOYDS TSB BANK"&lt;[EMAIL PROTECTED]&gt;
 9       (
10       <strong>
11         PERSONAL AND BUSINESS ACCOUNT
12       </strong>
13       )
14       <br>
15       &nbsp;personal &amp; business accountSecurity AlertPlease note
that Your
16       Lloyds TSB Online
17       <br>
18       &nbsp;Account is about to expire. In order for
19       <br>
20     </font>
21     <a
   
href="/sc?id=z2407631451zf9b8c3284e0a522ca80abdbfd6c81b03z&action=display">
22       View full message
23     </a>
24       <p>
25     </a>
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

     The link target starts on line 1 and ends on line 25!

     There are several problems with this, the principal one being that you
may not nest anchor elements - see the nested one on lines 21 to 23.
Netsurf is quite rightly confused by this humungus error as it sees the
nested link as the target - which, if you look at it refers to the document
you are actually looking at - see the URL quoted from Jim's message. It's
recursive!

     The other major problem is that anchors should not span across
paragraphs - notice the paragraph tags on lines 2 and 24.

     Apart from this, the use of an anchor element here is strongly
deprecated. All that was necessary was to delete lines 1 and 25 and make
line 2 read -

 2 <p id="report">

     The 'name' attribute is also, by the way, obsolescent, having been
replaced by the 'id' attribute  - available on all elements.

     The document is really a shocking (or good, depending on how you look
at it) example of really poor html.

                         Keith

-- 
Inspired!

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