394491 - Cannot successfully subscribe to RSS feed in Outlook 2007 from Firefox

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

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

Description

[Derrick Tennant]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.5) Gecko/20070713 Firefox/2.0.0.5
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.5) Gecko/20070713 Firefox/2.0.0.5

I have tried this on two seperate machines, both with the most up to date (non nightly builds) of firefox 2.0.0.x; One machine is an XP machine, and the other is Vista.  Both of them have Outlook 2007.
I click on "Subscribe to this feed using" and change it to Outlook 2007.  I then hit subscribe now, which brings me to the Outlook 2007 window which has loaded the raw XML file in what looks like an embedded IE window.  It does not subscribe in the Outlook RSS feeds folder.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Get PC running Windows XP/Vista(/2000?) and Office 2007
2. Go to RSS feed in Firefox 2.0.0.x
3. Subscribe to said feed using Outlook.
Actual Results:  
(copied from Details) I hit subscribe now, which brings me to the Outlook 2007 window which has loaded the raw XML file in what looks like an embedded IE window.  It does not subscribe in the Outlook RSS feeds folder.

Expected Results:  
The RSS feed would be added to the feeds in Outlook 2007.

If you would like, I can provide screenshots or anything else.

about:buildconfig

Build platform
target
i586-pc-msvc

Build tools
Compiler 	Version 	Compiler flags
$(CYGWIN_WRAPPER) cl 	12.00.8804 	-TC -nologo -W3 -Gy -Fd$(PDBFILE)
$(CYGWIN_WRAPPER) cl 	12.00.8804 	-TP -nologo -W3 -Gy -Fd$(PDBFILE)

Configure arguments
--enable-application=browser --enable-update-channel=release --enable-official-branding --enable-optimize --disable-debug --disable-tests --enable-static --disable-shared --enable-svg --enable-canvas --enable-update-packaging

Comment 1

[Derrick Tennant]

Attachment: Screenshot of Outlook 2007 showing XML file

Comment 2

[Phil Ringnalda (:philor)]

Could you try a few things, to see if you get the same result? Start menu, Run, then

"c:\program files\microsoft office\office12\outlook.exe" http://blog.mozilla.com/feed/

(assuming Office is installed in the default path, and that should be the same thing that subscribing from Firefox does), and

"c:\program files\microsoft office\office12\outlook.exe" feed:http://blog.mozilla.com/feed/

and then

"c:\program files\microsoft office\office12\outlook.exe" feed://blog.mozilla.com/feed/

and let us know whether any of those three work differently than subscribing from Firefox?

Also, is it only with the MoCo blog, or does it fail with any feed? A good one to try would be http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/xml/rss/blog/ (which is sent as application/rss+xml, unlike the generic text/xml that both MoCo and IE seem to think is good enough).

Comment 3

[Derrick Tennant]

(In reply to comment #2)
> Could you try a few things, to see if you get the same result? Start menu, Run,
> then
> 
> "c:\program files\microsoft office\office12\outlook.exe"
> http://blog.mozilla.com/feed/
> 
> (assuming Office is installed in the default path, and that should be the same
> thing that subscribing from Firefox does), and
> 
> "c:\program files\microsoft office\office12\outlook.exe"
> feed:http://blog.mozilla.com/feed/
> 
> and then
> 
> "c:\program files\microsoft office\office12\outlook.exe"
> feed://blog.mozilla.com/feed/
> 
> and let us know whether any of those three work differently than subscribing
> from Firefox?
> 
> Also, is it only with the MoCo blog, or does it fail with any feed? A good one
> to try would be http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/xml/rss/blog/ (which is sent as
> application/rss+xml, unlike the generic text/xml that both MoCo and IE seem to
> think is good enough).
> 

Yes!  Amazing!  When I use the plain http:// it works just as it does in firefox.  When I use either the feed: or the feed:// it opens a window asking me if I would like to add the feed to Outlook.  I'll try and grab a sceenshot to upload.

Also, I'm sorry for not posting it before, but it did this for every RSS feed that I had tried, not only the MoCo blog (I just used it as an example URI)

Comment 4

[Derrick Tennant]

Attachment: Screenshot of Outlook 2007 accepting a request to add an RSS feed.

Outlook 2007 accepting an RSS feed from the command line: "c:\program files\microsoft office\office12\outlook.exe" feed://blog.mozilla.com/feed/

(I'm sorry about the blank boxes.  If you need me to, I can try and make screenshots w/o the personal info)

Comment 5

[Phil Ringnalda (:philor)]

Hrm, interesting state for a bug to be in: I know exactly how to fix it, it's something I wanted to do anyway, it ought to block Fx3, but since I don't have Outlook 2007, I can't confirm it (since I don't know whether it's something specific to your machine or not).

Comment 6

[Derrick Tennant]

(In reply to comment #5)
> Hrm, interesting state for a bug to be in: I know exactly how to fix it, it's
> something I wanted to do anyway, it ought to block Fx3, but since I don't have
> Outlook 2007, I can't confirm it (since I don't know whether it's something
> specific to your machine or not).
> 

I've had the same experience with both my home machine and my work machine (which are different operating systems (Vista at home, XP at work) and different mfgrs (home is mostly HP, work is IBM).

I'm not sure if it's worth the effort, but I know that Microsoft offers a free trial of Outlook 2007 on their website.  (It's like a 350 meg download, but you have to sign up for a .net passport or whatever they call it now)

Comment 7

[Stephen Donner [:stephend] Not actively reading bugmail]

While I don't get the wizard mentioned in comment 3, I do get the rest of the behaviors; "Navigation cancelled" messages, or raw XML (as in the first URL).

Comment 8

[Phil Ringnalda (:philor)]

Attachment: Fix v.1

So, "fun" decision. When I looked at this several months ago, all the major dedicated feed readers I tested accepted either http:// and feed:// URLs both, or neither; I did find three minor ones which only accepted http:// URLs (by minor, I mean one has disappeared from the internet since, one has had two posts to its user forum since May, and one offers no clues to its activity, other than being 13 months old with no news or updates).

While I only wound up testing 22 feed readers, and found three that we'd break, it's pretty safe to say that the combined userbase of every reader I tested, working or not, is dwarfed by Outlook's. Also, while this won't be the magic key to make Thunderbird behave on all platforms, it too would like to not have to treat all http URLs as feeds, which is why I'd already looked at it.

Comment 9

[Asaf Romano (gone)]

Comment on attachment 279560 [details] [diff] [review]
Fix v.1

"cool".

Comment 10

[Phil Ringnalda (:philor)]

browser/components/feeds/src/FeedConverter.js 1.29