358291 - Firefox 2 is arbitrarily ignoring XSL on RSS (Atom) feed.

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 338621

(Firefox Graveyard :: RSS Discovery and Preview, defect)

Description

[Art Botterell]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.7) Gecko/20060921 Ubuntu/dapper-security Firefox/1.5.0.7
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1) Gecko/20061010 Firefox/2.0

This is a design choice that seems truly evil, in the sense of being non-transparent between content providers and users.  The California Office of Emergency Services has been presenting its emergency bulletins for over a year now in a format that supports automated clients, RSS readers and ordinary browser users alike... by the entirely standards-based expedient of applying an XSL stylesheet to an Atom file.  But with Firefox 2, users are required to use the technology of the browser's choice, not their own.

This seems like exactly the sort of arbitrary non-standard "enhancement" we've criticised Microsoft about for so long.  And the rationale seems to be a) the Firefox team knows best about the user experience, and besides, b) we don't really want to be bothered accomodating different ideas.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Go to http://www.edis.ca.gov and observe the main frame.
2.Try to view the content as it was intended by the issuing agency.
3.Beat head against wall, then install "best viewed without Firefox" disclaimer?

Actual Results:  
The browser demands that the user assign this content to a feed reader, offering no option for simply rendering the XML as styled.

Expected Results:  
Ideally, that the XML would be rendered per the XSL.  As an alternative, offer "Display styled XML in browser" as one of the user options.

I'm aware that this has been discussed before, but it badly needs to be reconsidered.  There's simply no justification for breaking standards-compliant sites in this way.  (The argument that "most" feeds work otherwise is as lame as it sounds... since when did we go into the business of enforcing the least common denominator?)

Bottom line... if IE can offer its users a choice, why can't Firefox manage as much?

Comment 1

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 338621 ***

Comment 2

[Tanner M. Young [:tmyoung]]

Verified Duplicate.