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RSS Broken
xmaveric
Registered User new member
Registered User new member
This is actually in reference to the main site RSS feed, not o the forums (if the forum even has one.)
I've tried the RSS today in a couple different readers, and they all say the feed is broken. Can you chex it out?
I've tried the RSS today in a couple different readers, and they all say the feed is broken. Can you chex it out?
xmaveric on
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This feed does not validate.
line 32, column 31: 'utf8' codec can't decode bytes in position 1096-1098: invalid data (maybe a high-bit character?) [help]
<title>News: The Tourn?n, Part Four</title>
^
In addition, this feed has issues that may cause problems for some users. We recommend fixing these issues.
Your feed appears to be encoded as "UTF-8", but your server is reporting "US-ASCII" [help]
line 32, column 23: title contains bad characters (8 occurrences) [help]
<title>News: The Tourn?n, Part Four</title>
^
line 46, column 23: description contains bad characters (4 occurrences) [help]
<description>The Tourn?n, Part Four</description>
Pedantic ass validators are not the best thing to go by. It's marking a question mark. Try running any XHTML compliant website through the validator. Even though it may be 100% perfect, it'll still flag stuff.
Surely it's a problem with the validator...
Regardless of what the validator says, it's still broken on many readers (for example, NetNewsWire Lite for OS X). "Works for me" helps just as little as "Use a better/different/my reader".
The help on that validator's site says that it might have something to do with the xml file's encoding differing from the webserver's xml file encoding. I know nothing of this, though.
So fix the encoding or strip the foreign characters from the feed.
The type the server reports really shouldn't affect readers in this manner. It might cause it to show a question mark there, but it shouldn't cause any problems with parsing the feed.
Besides, the proper type is declared _in_ the feed, which takes precedence.
Edit: Wait, it's not declared in the feed.
Isn't it interesting that Firefox, the standards-compliant browser that will usually cry foul over any non-strict coding will display the feed... but IE7, the browser that will display just about any piece of shit coded website out there, will not?
By the way MKR, I checked out your blog. Good stuff.
Firefox will cry foul on a broken page, but it'll still fail gracefully by displaying it as best it can. :P
I do agree that it would be a good idea to add the encoding to the feed, but you might want to e-mail the IE devs and those of your feed reader asking them to at least have their products try to display it. I'm sure google and mozilla aren't the only ones that know how to code past broken code.
You read my post, right?
I said yes, it should be fixed, but it would still be a good idea for other readers to handle it in a more graceful fashion.
Summary:
1: The feed needs to be fixed.
2: Readers really shouldn't fail completely when they encounter such a feed, because it's certainly not the only one out there.
Just one more example of standards getting in the way of things actually working...
1) the feedvalidator might be the least pedantic validator on the face of the planet.
2) those things it was complaining about were NOT question marks. (but some browsers display unknown characters as such.)
3) The character encoding declared in the feed does not take precedence.
As for why IE chokes on it when FF does not, read this blog post, as well as the follow-up in the comments
I can happily say that, because the someone in question is not me.
The PA code guy should be fired for his negligence!
<_<
>_>
This was already in my bug tracker.
Agreed.
On a completely unrelated topic, where do I submit my resume? ;-)
Firefox (2.0.0.8) fails to load the feed.
Thunderbird (2.0.0.6) reports it as an invalid feed.
Anyone else having problems?
EDIT: The last time I had a feed update was on Monday or Tues. I definitely hadn't seen Wed.'s comic and news posts.
I'm positive they've used "&" in their text in the past so I'm surprised their RSS code is breaking on it now. I'm not privy to that code though, so who knows.
I believe it will go away once the unescaped ampersand fall off the end of the feed. At least that's what happened last time.
In this thread juicejuice clearly explained that the problem is an invalid character in the RSS feed. Rather than reporting the problem to someone who can fix this simple mistake, the forum admin locked the thread saying he thinks it has "nothing to do with us".
I'm not trying to cause trouble, but isn't this forum for reporting bugs and user issues with the Penny Arcade website? The RSS feed has been broken for a week because it contains an error and users have reported the problem along with a simple explanation of how to fix it (you need to use "&" to put an ampersand in an RSS feed).
What gives?
It has nothing to do with us. There's nothing we can do about it. We only deal with the forums. This thread might allow the front page admins to see and fix the problem, so we leave it here, but it has nothing to do with us. We cannot fix it.
I see. I guess as someone who just visits this forum occasionally, it's not obvious that this is just for bugs in the PA forums themselves (and not for the entire site).
So how are we supposed to report problems with the site itself? At the very least, it seems like you guys (the forum admins) should have a way of contacting the people who run the site when it's broken.
Yeah, I know. I'm sure I'm not the only one who sent them mail as soon as the RSS feed died.
But we all also know the volume of email they get... and besides, my understanding is that they pay people to make sure the site runs. They shouldn't be the ones who have to worry about fixing a problem like this.