If I want to embed a flash video, using something like this:

http://www.metacafe.com/f/embed_bestof.swf?&channelID=1&searchKeywords=magic&timeframe=1

...it fails as the colons are replaced with : and the fullstops replaced with .

This also happens in the URL tag, but doesn't seem to affect the link from working.

On a side-note, I'm writing a simple replacement for youtube and metacafe links into embedded code, and have noticed that [url=blar]xyz[/url] leads to html looking similar to <a href="blar" class="postlink">xyz</a>, but a straightforward [url]blar[/url] leads to <a class="postlink" href="blar">blar</a> – i.e. the position of the class and href are inverted.

Is that possible to be standadised, so regular expressions trying to rip out the href don't need to be different according to how the user entered it?

Thanks,
Ed