test:anchors

problem

Links don't work when IE transforms local XSL file

description

anchors.xsl takes any xml-file as input and generates a small html-page with 3 links. The links point to anchors within the file:

<a href="#s1">Section 1</a>
...
<a id="s1"></a><h1>Section 1</h1>

The stylesheet can be run against:

The output is (or should be) always the same.

As long as the files are served from a remote web server, all goes well. But if IE transforms an xsl-file from the local filesystem, the links are broken. This can be reproduced by downloading the 3 above mentioned files and opening them in the browser.

On local xsl-files, the output page looks perfectly the same, but clicking one of the links brings up IE's errorpage: "The page cannot be displayed" with error msg "Cannot find server or DNS Error".

notes

With test.xml the error does not occur, although the file is exactly the same as test.xsl (only the names are different). IE seems to treat the anchors differently just because the input document is a local xsl-file.

When the error occurs, the actual html output seems to be correct (IE XML Tools show the same output as with an xml input). Also, the status bar shows the correct URI when the pointer moves over the link (eg "file:///C:/.../test.xsl#s1"). This seems to imply that the error is not in MSXML but in IE6.

status

The problem occurs in Internet Explorer 6.0.2800.1106

2004-09-30: started thread on xsl-list (09/10)

2004-10-06: posted question on Microsoft Product Feedback

Anton Triest [anton@cking.be]