Basic authentication URL not recognized

I'm doing testing on an internal application that support basic HTTP authentication. Ignore the security concerns for the minute.

My problem is that Safari won't recognize a URL in the format

http://<user>:<password>@example.com/

Instead I get an error page stating

Safari can’t open user:password@example.com" because OS X doesn’t recognize Internet addresses starting with “user:”.

I am explicitly stating http:// at the start of the URL (some of my URLs have a custom port number, but this happens on default 80 as well), I have tried the formats http://<user>@example.com, http://<user>:<password>@example.com, and even http://:@example.com/. Every time Safari complains of an invalid URL. These all work in Chrome.

Safari will support this format if I use https://<user>:<password>@example.com, however the application I am testing (3rd party) doesn't support https, so the query hangs.

Then it gets stranger still. We have a web page with a hyperlink in the format http://<user>:<password>@example.com/. This hyperlink opens in a new page and works (I get a phishing warning, but that's a separate issue). But if I copy the link target, and paste it into a new page it fails.

I am using Safari Version 8.0.6 (10600.6.3).

Is there some option somewhere to enable HTTP auth URLs (given it works for HTTPS)? Is this a bug?

Or is this intentional behaviour on the part of Safari not to allow HTTP auth? In which case, is it a bug that it works for a hyperlink, but not a manually entered URL?

Edit: If anyone has any tips about how to prevent auto-formatting of URLs that would be great too. I can't seem to prevent them all being turned into hyperlinks.