Network.standard-url.encode-query-utf8
Background
RFC 3987 describes how IRIs (Internationalized Resource Identifiers) work. Mozilla implements IRIs in part by allowing IRIs to be converted to URIs. However, many websites break with this option enabled.
For compatibility with these websites, as well as parity with IE and Opera, Mozilla now treats the query portion of a URI (the part following the ?) differently than the rest. This preference controls whether Mozilla strictly follows RFC 3987, or uses the more widely-compatible conventions.
Possible values and their effects
True
Encode the query portion of IRIs as UTF-8.
False
Encode the query portion of IRIs using the same encoding as the current page. (Default)
Caveats
- Setting this preference to true may introduce encoding errors in pages you visit if the sites are not properly configured.
Recommended settings
If you commonly use websites that use “extended” (non-ASCII) characters in their URIs, you should probably leave this preference as false.
First checked in
2006-04-13 by Masatoshi Kimura
Has an effect in
- Mozilla Firefox (trunk builds after 2006-04-13)
- SeaMonkey (trunk builds after 2006-04-13)
Related bugs
- Bug 261929 - Consider sending urls in UTF-8 by default (images/links with non-ASCII chacters not displayed)
- Bug 284474 - Converting to UTF-8 a url with an unescaped non-ASCII chars in the query part leads to an incompaitbility with most server-side programs
- Bug 333859 - Consider sending query in UTF-8 by default
