Encode entity in attribute - error

LegacyForum

Encode entity in attribute - error

I am using WebKing to scan a page which has a mailto in anchor tags in it. For all of the lines where I have the mailto WebKing is returning the error "Encode entity in attribute". I have been looking around, but haven't been able to find out any information on what it is talking about. From what I can tell the mailto seems to be formatted correctly and it does work correctly with the email client. Below is a sample tag from the page:

CODE

<td><a href="mailto:Web Team?subject=Website Seat Request for 1/25/05 7:00am Flight from DC to Boston&body=Send this email to Web Team to request a seat on the 1/25/05 Flight that departs DC at 7AM for Boston.">Request Seat</a></td>

LegacyForum

Hi Kmeuer,

This message is coming from Cleanup HTML, and it is in regards to the '&' in the URL posted. Because & is an escape character to begin an entity (for example   or £), you should encode the ampersand as & -- the ampersand will be decoded correctly by the browser.

Most current browsers recover from this error, which is why your link is working correctly but older browsers may encounter issues. This is particularly the case if the ampersand is followed by a legimate character entity. For example, with the url:

CODE

<a href="./currency.jsp?q=100&pounds=200">
Where older browsers may interpret this URL as being
CODE<a href="./currency.jsp?q=100?s=200">
We are aware that the documentation for Cleanup HTML could use improvement, particularly in regards to individual error messages, and we are working to resolve this.

Thank you for your question [:
Let me know if you have any other questions, either by posting here or by sending an email to webkingsupport@parasoft.com.