Help with XML (Firefox) and Slow Load (Thunderbird)

I am trying to access the following XML feed:

http://xml.pinnaclesports.com/xmlfeed.asp

But Firefox says it cannot load the live bookmark...

The top of the feed says this:

As of May 2nd, 2005 the User-Agent field of all HTTP-Headers must be set. Any string will do.

What do I do here?

Also, Thunderbird takes an incredibly long time to load up with the little status bar on the bottom. I compact folders and delete stuff regularly but it doesn't matter. It lags forever before the messages in the Inbox appear. Any solution to this?

TIA

 

Anybody?

 

The User-Agent string is a string (collection of letters... ) that identifies the browser type. The owner of that blog has decided that people who override their settings to prevent their browser from identifying itself cannot access the feed.

It may be a decision that was made by the blog owner or made by the ISP. Either way you must have manually set the User-Agent string to nothing as firefox wouldn't have it as nothing by default.

I don't know where the setting is in FF as I rarely use it for anything more than testing CSS but I'm sure you could find the information on their website or on google.

 

HI!
I checked out your link in Firefox and IE, they display the same and it's 'Greek to me"...I don't think there's anything you can do about it...I think the site has to do something about it.
I no longer use Thunderbird, but perhaps it's your mail server and not T-Bird that's causing the 'lag'
Just a shot in the dark...ya know?

 

It is an xml feed tony, its needs to be rendered by an agregator before it will make any sense. The server, when accepting the connection is checking the User-Agent field in the headers and if it is blank then refusing the connection.

The fact that you could see the 'greek' indicates that you managed to access the site fine and therefore have a user-agent field set and identifying the browser type.

Sebass has either overridden the FF setting and set his User-Agent to null or has a firewall/proxy program that is stripping any identifiable information from the headers.

 

Could Microsoft Firewall be causing that problem?

What is my solution here?

 

If you are refering to windows firewall then NO it won't be doing any of what I said. Other firewalls may be.

Check the setting in FF for your user-agent.

Enter 'about:config' in the url bar of FF (without quotes) and hit enter.

Is there a 'general.useragent.override' entry on the page ?

Goto this page on my server: http://ychatsharp.com/useragent/ using both FF and IE and tell me what it says for each.

 

LOL, sorry! I didn't know what an aggregator was until I Googled it just now! I shouldn't have poked my nose where it didn't belong.
Toni

 

Thats how you learn toni lol, next time some one says agregator you can go 'Ooh I know what that is' lol

 

general.useragent.contentlocale
general.useragent.extra.firefox
general.useragent.locale
general.useragent.security

Are all there...

FF:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.6) Gecko/20060728 Firefox/1.5.0.6

IE:

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; {A7CE5562-4EB0-A08D-043D-AD10DDEB91B8}; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)

 

SO nothing is blocking your useragent for firefox or ie as my server can see them fine.

Try accessing the feed with a different program. I use RSS bandit for my feed but you could try just opening it with IE which will confirm it is an issue with the FF feed reader.

 

This what RSS Bandit says:

Refresh feed '\Pinnacle Sports' failed with error: This XML document does not look like an RSS feed

WTF do I do to get this thing to work. I e-mailed Pinnacle and they swear the feed is working. This is a huge tool for me on the weekends. I must have it up and running.

 

I e-mailed Pinnacle and the short answer was that everything worked fine...but they forwarded me onto IT so we will see...

 

hmm it may be a problem with some badly constructed xml, lets see what their IT dept says