1239462 - Particular web page on CNET.COM: Unable to open / read feed subscription page

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(SeaMonkey :: Feed Discovery and Preview, defect)

Description

[epaul137ml]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:45.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/45.0
Build ID: 20160113004011

Steps to reproduce:

Attempt to open a RSS item from CNET.COM

Here is a link that fails to display:

http://cnet.com.feedsportal.com/c/34938/f/645093/s/4cca9594/sc/18/l/0L0Scnet0N0Croadshow0Cnews0Cwatch0Elive0Ecoverage0Efrom0Ethe0E20A160Edetroit0Eauto0Eshow0C0Tftag0FCAD590Aa51e/story01.htm



Actual results:

After attempting to open the item for a  while with a blank screen being shown in the contents portion of the screen, the following message appears:

Connection Interrupted

The document contains no data.

The network link was interrupted while negotiating a connection. Please try again.


Earlier in the week the contents would display but it would take a long time for the content to be displayed.


Expected results:

The contents of the news item should have been displayed in the content section.

Other RSS viewers such as Thunderbird and QuiteRSS have no issues with this item.

Comment 1

[Rainer Bielefeld]

My attempt to reproduce with  SeaMonkey German 2.39 final Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:42.0 from official download area)  Gecko/20100101  Firefox/42.0  Build 20151103191810  (Classic Theme) on German WIN7 64bit (observations more or less reproducible at this stage):
1. In Browser open <http://www.cnet.com/>
2. Bottom right end of page, click "RSS"
   » <http://www.cnet.com/rss/> with list of RSS feed links appears       :-)
3. Click "CNET News" <http://www.cnet.com/rss/news/>
   Expected: Feed subscription or at least Web Page shown like in 
             FF 46.0a1 (2016-01-10)
   Actual: <about:blank> white page without contents appears, no feed
          subscription                                                    :-(
4. Try to show <http://www.cnet.com/rss/news/> in safe mode without add-ons:
   Now everything works fine, feed subscription in SM Email client
5. New Test with blank new profile following:
6. In Browser menu 'Tools → Switch Profile → Administrate Profiles →
   New Profile “Feedtest”'
   » Browser opens with new profile
7. redo steps 1-3:
   » Browser shows  <http://www.cnet.com/rss/news/>                       :-)
8. Select “News & Blogs” → [Subscribe Now]
   » Mail client opens (you will have to click away some question dialogs),
     feed subscription will work                                          :-)
     CNET News appears with 20 items in Thread Pane.
9. I did some tests with a copy of my normal user profile (Rainer2)
   and various SM versions, results: works fine with                      :-)
   SM 2.10, 2.33.1 Build 20150321194901 and even 2.39 from above.
10. And strange: after these tests Auto feed subscription also works
    fine with my normal profile in step 3                                 :-/

So currently my conclusion is: not a simple SM bug, but related to a particular add-on or plugin or something else. Some more research required.

"Feed Discovery" for now.

@reporter:
Can you please help and try to find out whether a particular add-on or plugin causes the problem by deactivating one by one? Or what else might be the problem?
Messages from 'Tools → Web Development → Error console' in step 3 might be useful.

Comment 2

[epaul137ml]

I was able to reproduce my problem with ALL plugins disabled.

The issue lies with the slowness that RSS items from CNET are rendered. There appears to be something different with their HTML construct that does not apply to other RSS items from other RSS servers. Seamonkey has no problems showing RSS item content from other sources.

Comment 3

[epaul137ml]

The title of this bug report does not match the issue that I reported yesterday.

Comment 4

[Rainer Bielefeld]

(In reply to epaul137ml from comment #3)
Indeed, that summary implies a wrong "expected behavior".

a) After my tests I was no longer able to reproduce the bug "only white page 
   <about:blank>" shown.
a1) Instead any click of one of the links on <http://www.cnet.com/rss/> 
    immediately subscribes the related RSS feed, what IMHO is wrong.
    A selection and preview page as shown in screenshot should be shown.
b) In the evening the "white page" problem reappeared, all links on
   <http://www.cnet.com/rss/> opened white empty pages, saved pages show
   code
   <html><head>
   <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"></head>
   <body></body></html>
c) I opened CNET iPhone Update-link in an existing minimum user profile,
   page as I get in FF and shown in attachment opened. 
d) after having switched back to normal profile always immediate RSS feed 
   subscription was the result of a click on any of the links on
   <http://www.cnet.com/rss/>
e) I wonder whether this problem really is RSS feed related or whether we 
   simply have a "page ont loaded correctly" problem, because of 
   poor browser sniffing, slow page update or what ever else, the answer is
   beyond my competence.
f) This one is a very old issue. SM 2.10 or older,
   or may be page server related, has nothing to do with SM?
   Version 2.10 for now.
g) I will additionally involve CNET.COM support tomorrow.

Comment 5

[Rainer Bielefeld]

Attachment: FF - Screenshot

Such a page should open in Browser

Comment 6

[Rainer Bielefeld]

h) NOT reproducible with  English SeaMonkey 2.43a1  (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:46.0)
   Gecko/20100101 Firefox/46.0 Build 20151220153800  (Classic Theme) on VirtualBox 
   Ubuntu 14.04 LTS:
   In 2 tests I did in step 2 page like you see in  FF - Screenshot opened
   WIN related?
   Linux Test User Profile too simple?