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[Fixed in desktop Web Clipper Version 7.19] URL links inside article are broken


dregar

Idea

On Edge browser: when clipping web pages, all URL links inside the article gets broken. When previewing, the links are fine. But after the article gets saved in Evernote, they get converted to broken links. I've tested on both Article and Simplified Article options. 

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1 minute ago, dregar said:

On Edge browser: when clipping web pages, all URL links inside the article gets broken. When previewing, the links are fine. But after the article gets saved in Evernote, they get converted to broken links. I've tested on both Article and Simplified Article options. 

Noted and reported on several Chrome-based browsers.  Waiting for a fix.

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You say the links are broken... Are they removed or been replaced by something else?

Try this as an experiment. Choose any simple web page which includes a link and clip it into Evernote. Check that has the same result as before. Assuming it does, what happens if you then simplify the formatting? Does that fix the link? 

Just doing some diagnosis at this point.

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As far as the Chrome issue is concerned (and Edge,  I gather,  is now Chrome based too...) it's any link in a clipped page from any website will revert back to the original clipped site,  and not to the information to which the site was linking.

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Hi @agsteele, @PinkElephant

I've tried several webpages and they all behave the same way. It could be simple or complex web pages. Try this one: https://darrenrowse.com/thoughts/can-you-really-make-money-blogging-7-things-i-know-about-making-money-from-blogging/

The links inside the article get converted to https://darrenrowse.com/thoughts/can-you-really-make-money-blogging-7-things-i-know-about-making-money-from-blogging/undefined (which is invalid URL).

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4 hours ago, dregar said:

Hi @agsteele, @PinkElephant

I've tried several webpages and they all behave the same way. It could be simple or complex web pages. Try this one: https://darrenrowse.com/thoughts/can-you-really-make-money-blogging-7-things-i-know-about-making-money-from-blogging/

The links inside the article get converted to https://darrenrowse.com/thoughts/can-you-really-make-money-blogging-7-things-i-know-about-making-money-from-blogging/undefined (which is invalid URL).

I can confirm the same behavior in the latest Web Clipper version for Safari and Chrome. This is a major bug! 😞

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I think @gazumped has the best insight. Raise a support ticket for the Web Clipper. It will take a few days due to the New Year holiday so I'd wait until next week.

I suspect a fix will roll out but you should raise your experieexperience You should probably see this thread which has more information:

 

 

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On 12/31/2021 at 12:50 AM, agsteele said:

Raise a support ticket for the Web Clipper.

Raised a support ticket, and got the following response today:

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Thank you for bringing this to our attention. I can confirm that this is an issue we are aware of, and our Development Team is now working on a resolution for this.The issue should be fixed on our next release. While I am unable to confirm the exact date of it, please bear with us while a fix is on its way.

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It's happening on Firefox on Windows 10 1909. Firefox and Evernote Clipper up to date as I installed them for the work around. Multiple sites.

https://www.mkbergman.com/414/large-scale-rdf-graph-visualization-tools/

https://www.zdnet.com/article/graph-databases-and-rdf-its-a-family-affair/

https://dotnetrdf.org/docs/stable/user_guide/Tools.html

This is beyond a joke as a mission critical fail with no notification to users. I probably have 100 Webclips actually have 357 Webclips not correctly clipped in the last 3 10 days (current til 4 Jan 2022). I have no problem with having a break for the holidays. I do have an issue with dropping an update and then going on holidays!

[edit] To be fair it looks like the browsers have probably broken something. Webclipper 7.18.0 looks like it was released 16 Dec 2021. My links last worked 24 Dec 2021 16:59 and first broke 24 Dec 2021 18:02 (Australian Eastern Summer Time). But this does not seem to match up with any new Browser release for Edge or Chrome or Brave.

  • Edge Version 96.0.1054.62: December 17 Fixed various bugs and performance issues.
  • Monday, December 20, 2021 - The Stable channel is being updated to 96.0.4664.111 (Platform version: 14268.67.0) for most Chrome OS devices.
  • Brave Desktop Release Notes V1.33.106 (Dec 14, 2021)
  • Firefox 95.0.2 Firefox Release December 19, 2021

Plot thickens. I guess it might be in the backend checking for mailicious links being uploaded into Evernote perhaps.

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On 1/2/2022 at 4:14 AM, PinkElephant said:

You can use FireFox (all platforms) or Safari (Apple only) instead.

Web clipper in Firefox is also affected. This is an issue with the Web Clipper itself and there are posts about this issue spread out across various forums here.

---

I apologize in advance if this is a forum no-no, but I'm cross posting from another thread I posted in just earlier *in case it helps someone else.*

Just noting that the source URL of the clip itself works correctly even if the links in the clip are fubar.  And in case no one else has mentioned it, because it doesn't involve the clipper, emailing notes to Evernote preserves the links. (Someone else suggested printing a pdf of the webpage you want to clip and importing that into Evernote.)

This issue started somewhere around November 23rd, as best as I can tell, as my clips before that all have working external links. When I raised this issue to Support on December 9th, they suggested copying and pasting the desired text into a new note as a workaround. 

I agree with @gazumped in that other thread. The more people who contact Support directly might help grease whatever wheels are needed to get 7.19 out. Web Clipper 7.18 is nearly useless and I'm not technically proficient enough to try and install an earlier version of the clipper.

At this point, I'm trying to be patient, but not really succeeding.

Edited by JenTo
added reason for cross posting
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On 1/12/2022 at 7:46 PM, JenTo said:

At this point, I'm trying to be patient, but not really succeeding.

This is a show stopping bug. A note taking app that incorrectly copies web notes! It took me a week to notice as you just assume it works.
Core functionality broken for close to a MONTH. 

I am beyond understanding and seething with contempt for Evernote as a professional developer and service provider. Apparently this barely contained outrage still pales into insignificance with the their organisational and I can only assume intentional disregard towards a once loyal userbase being demonstrated through their lack of action and communication ... time and time and time and time again.

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So Chrome gets an update which breaks an external add-on. That leaves the developers of the add-on with the task of finding the problem then writing the new code to deploy the fix.

Add to this that the first reports of the issues came in during the Christmas/New Year vacations and that leaves about two weeks to diagnose, fix and deploy.

What answer did you get to the support ticket you submitted?

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7 hours ago, agsteele said:

So Chrome gets an update which breaks an external add-on.

What's your evidence for that? I have downgraded to a previous version of the webclipper and it works perfectly as it always used to. I haven't downgraded chrome. I'm afraid my working assumption is that EN shipped a product without adequate QA. It would hardly be the first time.

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On 1/19/2022 at 9:51 AM, agsteele said:

So Chrome gets an update which breaks an external add-on. That leaves the developers of the add-on with the task of finding the problem then writing the new code to deploy the fix.

I am glad you understand the problem. This is Evernotes job. They have a product that relies on browser  to work ... Chromium is used on at least 3 browsers I use and has a clear development and beta testing programs whish should have highlighted the impending problem.

Regardless of the reason. A whole month of web clipper incorrectly documenting webpages ... which is a pretty core function of a web clipper in my opinion and only notification of the fault was from the users really does not meet my expectations of a professional response for an application with millions of users and hundreds of employees.

At best this should have been an overnight fix. At worst a week. But no action for a month? Not even rolling back to a working version!

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On 1/19/2022 at 5:49 PM, Mike P said:

I have downgraded to a previous version of the webclipper and it works perfectly as it always used to. I haven't downgraded chrome. 

Can you please advise how you did this or some links to resources to let me do this? Thanks.

[edit] I used this guide and Web Clipper 7.15.0 CRX. Web Clipper 7.17.0.  Probably not the worlds best security idea ... so use at your own risk and discretion.

[edit 20220122 164300] 7.17.0 still has the bug but different. 7.15.0 is okay i think,

  1. I removed Web Clipper 7.18.0 via Extensions Manager.
  2. Unzipped the Webcliper 7.15.0 CRX using WinRAR into a folder.
  3. Changed the CRX manifest.json update URL to http://localhost 
  4. Manually load 7.15.0 from the unzipped folder using Load Upacked in Extensions Manager

The 7.17.0 Web Clipper seemed to remember i was logged in ... so perhaps not as much of a security risk as I first thought. You will need to refresh pages (or restart your browser) to enable Webclipper. This solution works on my up to date browsers as of 21 Jan 2022;

  • Microsoft Edge Version 97.0.1072.62 (Official build) (64-bit)
  • Brave Version 1.34.80 Chromium: 97.0.4692.71 (Official Build) (64-bit)

FYI. The CRX files significantly reduced in size from 7.16 to 7.17. A refactor of code perhaps ?

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1 hour ago, pac_71 said:

A whole month of web clipper incorrectly documenting webpages ... which is a pretty core function of a web clipper in my opinion and only notification of the fault was from the users really does not meet my expectations of a professional response

I'll ask again... What answer did you get from your support ticket? That answer may be helpful to us all. :)

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6 hours ago, agsteele said:

I'll ask again... What answer did you get from your support ticket? That answer may be helpful to us all. :)

10 Jan 2022. email from my Evernote team contact.

Quote

I truly understand your frustration with this issue. Please know that it will be fixed in the upcoming version of Web Clipper. I appreciate your patience in the meantime.

Only thing that is helpful for was to confirm its time to look for another solution.

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...And by the way,  all browsers - particularly Firefox - are wary of security issues with extensions,  which is why they're only available through the appropriate 'shop'.  And all extensions and updates to extensions have to go through a shop vetting process which is not under Evernote's control.  So the process here is - 

  1. find the issue - one of the slowest parts of the process,  depending on the degree of help available from users to zero in on a cause.
  2. work out how to fix things and (for browser related stuff) issue revised code - relatively quick.
  3. submit the revisions to the browser for approval - the other slowest bit...
  4. publish!

-It can take a while...

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9 hours ago, gazumped said:

...And by the way,  all browsers - particularly Firefox - are wary of security issues with extensions,  which is why they're only available through the appropriate 'shop'.  And all extensions and updates to extensions have to go through a shop vetting process which is not under Evernote's control.  So the process here is - 

Fair cop. But they could have rolled back. Advised users. Anticipated the problem better. All things I would have thought Evernote should do to avoid a cornerstone of their product not failing completely but almost silently incorrectly clipping the hyperlinks in a webpage. I am not sure about other users but I was not checking every webpage link. Until now ...

Now I just dread Evernote failing in some other unknown way. eg the remvoal the classic web interface in the same way they just dumped the really old but good web interface without any notification. I know they cannot be everything for everyone but how much thought or effort does it take to not alienate the few when they are already giving of themselves to use Evernote? Evernote has asked for our patience as they have a plan ... not 100% sure what that is but prioritising new feature and breaking working features is really trying worn out my patience and good will to zero.

The shortest revision cycle for the web clipper since 2020 I could find was between 3 and 19 Nov 2021. Hope it wont be the longest ....9.5 months. with Evernote not giving any indication as to when this will be fixed apart from the next release.

At least I now have a backup of my browser extensions and a method to roll back to previous versions ... so I guess I have learned something :>

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5 minutes ago, pac_71 said:

But they could have rolled back. Advised users. Anticipated the problem better.

I would be interested to hear on what date a user actually first told Evernote that there was a problem.  In 12 years this has never happened before,  so they - as we - could not have expected it.  I wasn't even aware I'd been affected until there was a WTF query in the forums,  and that wasn't so long ago.  Evernote may not have been aware until someone raised a support request relatively recently.  And 'recalls' aren't easy on a browser extension that's probably installed on millions of browsers with releases and roll-backs controlled by Google,  Microsoft and Mozilla.

This isn't the first software fail,  and it won't be the last.  It will be fixed - meantime even if you get redirected to the original page,  it's only an extra click on the actual link.

-And before anyone starts with the fanboi remarks;  there are lots of ways Evernote could and should do lots better - but I've worked for big IT companies. When stuff goes wrong,  there's only so much you can do to fix it.

 

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12 hours ago, gazumped said:

meantime even if you get redirected to the original page,  it's only an extra click on the actual link.

ff the original page is still there. One reason for for using EN to clip articles is in case the webpage disappears. Having said that the good news is that you can fugure out what the link should be from the garbled clip that is there.

12 hours ago, gazumped said:

I would be interested to hear on what date a user actually first told Evernote that there was a problem

My support request was submitted on 9 December.

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2 hours ago, Mike P said:

My support request was submitted on 9 December.

Thanks for that - so Evernote have had this information for around 25 working days (you may remember there were a few recent holidays...).  Don't know how long it takes to get a fix through the browser-moderated testing process,  but on that timescale even if they had an instant fix we have a while yet to wait for the fix to be released.

If you got this issue,  report it to Support please people - the higher the volume of aggravation the quicker the fix...

 

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On 1/21/2022 at 11:41 AM, gazumped said:

-It can take a while...

I also advised Evernote initially on the 9th of December and indicated to them that notes clipped prior to November 23rd correctly parse external URLs.

After being advised that the developers were working on it and having my support thread closed, I contacted support again on December 30th to ask if there was any update. This is the response I received on January 3rd:

Quote

The good news is that our development team has resolved the issue. They're currently working to implement the fix in the next Web Clipper version 7.19. I'm afraid there's not a date when this new version will be released, but it will update automatically to your browser.

So, I'm not sure what "resolved" means in this context.  While I've been told I have the patience of a saint, even my patience is wearing thin.

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8 minutes ago, JenTo said:

So, I'm not sure what "resolved" means in this context.

Even if it means 'fixed 100%' see my comments above about browser approval times.  Evernote have no control over the process and cannot publish an app extension without it.  Don't know how long it takes,  but a I suspect a month would be pretty quick.  Meantime again:  there are work-arounds...

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16 hours ago, gazumped said:

meantime even if you get redirected to the original page,  it's only an extra click on the actual link.

Not happening for me. Each external link I click on in a clipped note leads to a 404 error because the external link leads back to the source page itself rather than the external link and has "undefined" attached to the end. As an example, if in a note clipped from google.com there is an external link to evernote.com, the URL I arrive at is google.com/undefined.

This is why I've only been using the source URL that is clipped along with the note. That does work correctly.

 

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1 minute ago, JenTo said:

using the source URL that is clipped along with the note. That does work correctly.

Yep - that's what I meant.  And as @Mike P said,  even if the source page is gone you can edit the link to remove the errored code to get there.

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7.17.0  7.15.0 (only tested 7.15.0 but 7.16.0 or Older might work) Web Clipper versions work with current browser. Dramatic change in Web Clipper CRX size from 7.15.0 to 7.16. I think Evernote has been fiddling and breaking things. Which probably means they should have been more careful or picked it up in regression testing. I guess they will learn from this as I have ... but this failure is costing me time & lost productivity to fix mis clipped pages and a backlog of 200 research web clips over the 3 weeks since i noticed the issue!

I think the actually time of breaking is probably more coincidental with a browser update which might have forced an extension update to 7.18.0 which is why people are seeing dramatically different date of when they began to be affected. If it was the browser and a long term issue, 7.17.0 probably should not work too.

[edit] My work around for keeping a backlog of webpages to clip. I am moving my page to clip into a tab group. You can use Tabox to save a snapshot so or Tab-Snap to save open URLs to clipboard and then text file you can then close tabs. I prefer Tab-Snap as you can then cut and paste like 10 URLs at a time into a New Window and then clip them without maxing out memory or mucking up your current browser open tabs too much

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All the Hyperlinks within any captured Web Clips are being replaced by the source URL of the captured web clip in question, with an appended "undefined" to the end of the URL. This appears to be happening within all major browsers, as well as with android devices. (tested Android 12). I can re-create this in Firefox, Edge and Chrome as well as when sharing a web clip on my Android phone by using the share menu sending to Evernote.

I have an open ticket with Evernote support, still waiting on a response. I'm hoping this gets resolved soon.Evernote_webClip_linkBug.thumb.jpg.ad0fb4e17bc9642d017743e5050c8716.jpg

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3 hours ago, DWise said:

This appears to be happening within all major browsers,

You're posting in a long thread that confirms this to be the case and complains - a lot - about the bug.  Evernote are aware,  and are working on a fix but don't have a delivery date yet.  There are work arounds in the thread.  Part of the problem here appears to be that the bug is in Clipper,  and browser providers have to independently inspect and verify all code associated with add-ins - a process over which Evernote have no control.

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As I said I have an open case with Evernote on the issue, I've sent them amble info, as I'm sure many others have as well, the post was meant to be informative not asking anyone for help. The issue isn't just with browsers, I'm able to recreate the issue when sharing a web clip on my android phone as well. I'm not so sure its 'just' related to the web extension unless android is using the web clipper extension. 

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38 minutes ago, DWise said:

I'm not so sure its 'just' related to the web extension unless android is using the web clipper extension. 

Hmmn.  A very good point.  We'll await developments with interest...

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5 hours ago, DWise said:

I have an open ticket with Evernote support, still waiting on a response.

We know what they will say from previous posts in this thread and others but thankyou for helping to keep up the pressure for them to release an update to the webclipper with the problem solved. 

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I'm certain that the issues with your phone are distinct from the desktop web clipper which we hope are now resolved. I great your experiences on Android were a coincidence. You should raise a ticket for the Android issue. At the moment the Android v10.25 isn't receiving shares from a browser at all for me.

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As I mentioned above I already have an open ticket, and all web clips regardless of device or browser were having the "same" issue, all hyperlinks within any captured web clips were pointing to the source URL with the "undefined" JavaScript type error appended to the end of the URL. The Web Clipper has been updated for both Firefox and Chrome and as such the issue appears to be resolved for them, the issue with respect to "my" version of android (v12) sharing a web clip has has not been resolved nor the client updated. It appears the issue also still exists for the Web Clipper with MS Edge as well. The issue is related. I can only assume that the fix is in the works now that they have isolated the cause and that its just a matter of time. The post was meant to be informative not a request for assistance or to complain.

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Happy to say that Web Clipper on Firefox desktop browser updated to 7.19 on January 28th and it looks like external links are working correctly again there. 🙂 This is a huge relief.

But there is still an issue with Firefox on Android 12. When "sharing" from the Firefox Android browser to Evernote, the Evernote message says the page was clipped, but it doesn't show up in Evernote itself. So until that is fixed, I'll just email my note to Evernote instead.

Is there a separate forum for Android?

One down, one to go.

 

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