I was testing my web application both on Firefox 2.0 and Internet Explorer 7. The application uses long URL’s. I noticed that the rather small limit of the URL length already present on Internet Explorer 6 is still there on the version 7. In this post I am studying what is the actual, practical limit of the Internet Explorer’s URL length.
At one stage, my project needs to pass plenty of parameter between two forms using the GET method (I know, I should use the POST method but I can’t). During the design phase I checked around and I learned that Internet Explorer 6 has a limitation of 2048 (or about) for a valid URL. Firefox 1.x does not have a known limitation. To be on the safe side, I made the necessary to stay below 1500 characters for my effective URL between the two modules.
My deception was big when I tested the application with Internet Explorer 6. Of course it crashed saying it cannot load the page. Same thing with the version 7. Hmmm, I am in trouble. I checked the length of the URL and it was 1931. What went wrong in my calculations? I guess that a part of the answer comes from the special characters. Just for an example, the space character appears as %20 in the URL.
What is the limit then for Internet Explorer ? In my case I gradually stepped down in the length of the URL until it started to work with Internet Explorer 7. I got 1772 characters with space characters converted to %20 (and other special characters encoded accordingly).
The bottom line is that why Microsoft has kept this stupid limitation on Internet Explorer 7, one may ask ?
