Christopher Finke writes about software, woodworking, and other creative endeavors.

Our bad

According to this Slashdot post, my.netscape.com was hosting a DTD file critical for users of RSS 0.91 feeds, but when we closed My Netscape for a much needed redesign, the file got lost in the shuffle. (Why an RSS DTD file was being hosted under the my.netscape.com subdomain is anybody’s guess…)

We should have it available again fairly soon, but as it appears that this was noticed as early as Friday, I wish that someone had notified us about it before the middle of a three-day weekend, when making a change to a production site becomes much more time-consuming. (Actually, I wish that someone had notified us at all: as far as I know, nobody contacted anybody at Netscape to report the problem before it was reported on Slashdot.)

No worries though; this kind of thing just reminds me of how much Web history there is at Netscape: they invented Javascript, they pioneered the modern Web browser, and apparently, they hosted some obscure but very important DTD files.

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6 responses to “Our bad”

  1. dmb Avatar
    dmb

    Well, that seems to be how the internet is now working, unfortunately. Whether it be a security bug in a product, or a broken link to a DTD. People tend to dislike large companies, and instead of using there bug reporting fascilities, they like to post it in a very public area such as slashdot. There is nothing the company or slashdot can do about this, because this is how people are. You will notice the same thing happens to IE bugs, and even Firefox bugs.

    Reply
  2. Christopher Finke Avatar
    Christopher Finke

    I understand the desire to publicize the information, but for anyone who wanted the bug actually fixed, it would have been far more productive to contact a member of the Netscape team.

    No big deal though; there’s no such thing as bad publicity, right? Right?

    Reply
  3. Jason Schramm Avatar
    Jason Schramm

    And how would they have found a Netscape member? I didn’t notice the problem, but it’s not like I have a contact list of Netscape employees.

    Reply
  4. Christopher Finke Avatar
    Christopher Finke

    Jason: http://www.netscape.com/about lists all of the Netscape.com employees.

    Reply
  5. Alex Bishop Avatar
    Alex Bishop

    “Why an RSS DTD file was being hosted under the my.netscape.com subdomain is anybody’s guess…”

    My guess is that it was because RSS was originally developed by Netscape for My Netscape. But I’m sure you already knew that.

    The RSS 0.91 spec was also put on my.netscape.com. That seems to have gone missing as well. (The older RSS 0.9 spec was removed in 2001.)

    Will the RSS 0.9 DTD (formerly at http://my.netscape.com/publish/formats/rss-0.9.dtd) be coming back?

    Reply
  6. Christopher Finke Avatar
    Christopher Finke

    Alex: I actually did know that but had forgotten. I’m constantly amazed at what tech originally came out of Netscape.

    I would have no problem with getting any and all Netscape-hosted specs and DTDs available again; I’ll forward your requests on to Tom Drapeau (the lead developer for Netscape.com), as I’ll be knee-deep in browser development for the foreseeable future.

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