Frequently Asked Questions
Firefox tries to download my RSS feed
Q.
When I click on the RSS link, my web browser tries to download it instead of display it.
A.
Textpattern identifies its RSS and Atom feeds as “application/rss+xml” and “application/atom+xml” respectively. This is so that applications can distinguish between the different types of feeds without having to guess [1].
Different browsers handle “application/xml” in different ways. Mozilla and Firefox prompt the user with a file download dialog box.
The important thing to remember is that XML feeds are not web pages. They are not indended for viewing in a web browser.
1 The “old-fashioned” method was to identify feeds as “text/xml”. This merely identifies the document as XML, not as a news feed. Nor does it provide any way to distinguish between RSS and Atom, and can lead to character set encoding problems.
Posted 20 February 2006, 23:30 by Alex Shiels
