Prevent TinyMCE/Internet Explorer from converting URLs to links

Question

I'm using TinyMCE to provide users the capability of simple text formatting (bold, italics, lists) on a textarea form field. Everthing is working properly except that in Internet Explorer (8 but I've read it happens on earlier versions), when users type a URL (e.g. www.google.com) it is automatically converted into an HTML link in the TinyMCE editor as they type. This does not happen in Firefox (3). How can I prevent IE from doing this?

I've initialized TinyMCE with the following:

tinyMCE.init({
    mode : "textareas",
    theme : "simple",
    convert_urls : false
 });

But I don't think convert_urls is intended to affect the behavior I'm describing: http://wiki.moxiecode.com/index.php/TinyMCE:Configuration/convert_urls

I tried:

function myCustomURLConverter(url, node, on_save) {
    return url;
}

tinyMCE.init({
    mode : "textareas",
    theme : "simple",
    urlconverter_callback : "myCustomURLConverter"
 });

But similarly I think this is just a way to affect how/whether URLs are converted upon load/save, not to prevent them from being converted to links as users type: http://wiki.moxiecode.com/index.php/TinyMCE:Configuration/urlconverter_callback

The issue I'm trying to fix is described in at least a couple of places: http://tinymce.moxiecode.com/punbb/viewtopic.php?id=2182&p=1 (third post, by tommya) http://drupal.org/node/149511

Has anyone seen this before or have any suggestions on how to fix it? The TinyMCE code-base is pretty big and difficult to trace so I was hoping someone could help me isolate the issue a bit.

Answer 1

Doesn't seem to be a way to disable that in IE. It seems to be a 'feature' and it occurs on FCKEditor too. A couple alternatives, remove the element out of the valid elements. http://wiki.moxiecode.com/index.php/TinyMCE:Configuration/valid_elements

Or do a serverside tag parse to remove it.

I think this may be the 'feature' http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa769893(VS.85).aspx

And here maybe a hint in getting it to work, but it looked like ActiveX and VB so I got lost pretty quick in my experiment http://www.mindfrost82.com/showpost.php?p=1114381&postcount=2

Answer 2

I think I solved it this way:

remove_script_host: "false",
relative_urls: "false",
document_base_url : "http//www.mywebsite.nlhttp://www.mywebsite.nl",

Answer 3

Here's a working workaround, needing the paste plugin. In your TinyMCE init config, add :

paste_preprocess : function(pl, o) {
    // Strip <a> HTML tags from clipboard content (Happens on Internet Explorer)
    o.content = o.content.replace( /(\s[a-z]+=")<a\s[^>]+>([^<]+)<\/a>/gi, '$1$2' );
}