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Correcting Problems With Special HTML Characters On Squidoo Lenses

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What Is uFFFD And Why Does It Keep Showing Up On My Lens?!

Some modules on Squidoo have a problem showing special HTML characters, they may look okay when you work on them, but the next time you open that module to edit it, you'll see white question marks in black diamonds in place of your special characters.

This is known as the Unicode Replacement Glyphs, and if you close the editor you'll see "%uFFFD" in place of them.

Here's a couple of ways to work through this problem.

Replacing The Replacement Glyphs

This may not be the best way to deal with this issue, but when I had this problem it was on some Amazon Spotlight Modules that I had been using non-breaking spaces ( ) to add extra spaces between characters. I also had a few words that required letters like lower case letter "a" with an acute accent (รก).

In the modules that were causing me trouble, each of them needed to have the glyphs replaced with the same special characters, so I used FoxReplace to substitute my missing characters for every glyph in the affected modules.

Replacement Glyphs Examples



(Pay no mind to the red underlines, I just haven't told my spell check that "nbsp" is a word! Same for the others you see there, also.)

Replaced Glyphs



And here's how it looked when I finished:

Finished Editing

Replacing 'uFFFD'

If I didn't replace those Replacement Glyphs, I would have something that looked like this when I closed the editor:

Saved With uFFFD



If that happens, I can fix it in pretty much the same fashion:

Replacing uFFFD



Replacing uFFFD 02



Finished Editing

A Solution That Would Prevent The Problem From Occuring Again

The problem is that every time the module is opened, this error can happen again. The problem only happens when the special characters are used under the "Why is this worth spotlighting" section of the Amazon Spotlight Module so for this module a better solution would be to move that information to the description area.

Redesigned Lens



Which looks something like this when published:

Finished View



I think I like the way the second solution came out, there is actually a lot more flexibility with having the information in the description area.

Unfortunately, if these problems happen on a Link List Module, there not much that can be done with it other than switching to a Text Module and manually typing out all the HTML for the links.

The Code I Used

I based this on the code thefluffanutta uses for the Amazon Link Generator.

It took a little bit of reworking to get that to look right. Crazy as it seems, some HTML formatting works under the product area, so I was able to leave my list in that box.

Stacking the track information vertically in the description area just took up too much room, so I added this paragraph tag before Set 1:

<p style="float:left; margin-left:130px; margin-right:30px; width:131px;" align="center">

Then right after I close the tag (right after the word "Pair") with </p> I started the next tag just before "Set 2":

<p style="float:right; margin-left:30px; margin-right:130px; width:131px;" align="center">

I found that by starting the next floating list on the same line as the end of the first floating list, I was able to keep them at the same height when published.

If you'd like to learn even more about floating paragraphs and other CSS tricks on Squidoo, check out this Lens:


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FoxReplace

Like the looks of that Firefox add-on, FoxReplace?

Have a look for yourself:
FoxReplace :: Add-ons for Firefox
Lets you replace text in web pages. You can define a substitution list and apply it automatically or at your own discretion, or make individual substitutions. You can use this as a filter, or just for fun :)

Special Characters

If you want to know more about special characters and the codes needed to make them appear, check here:
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The Tony Levin Lens

See the Lens that gave me all this trouble.

For right now, it is staying with the first solution until I have time to change all the Amazon Spotlight Modules to the 2nd solution.
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Correcting Problems With Special HTML
Characters On Squidoo Lenses
by CleanerLife
is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0
United States License.

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CleanerLife

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