Weird Characters And XSL Not Producing in Firefox

[Matt Kitchen]

First off, I'm not a coder, and all the work i have done so far has been mostly editing other peoples code - so i know some, but not a lot - and props to the originals.

Anyway, i am trying to get a RSS Parser to work - its ASP that utilizes an .xsl file - It works fine in IE and Safari (it shows the first 5 stories w/ links) EXCEPT it displays two funky characters at the top:

ÿþ

In Netscape and Firefox i get the same funky characters, but instead of getting the right output, it just spits out the raw HTML onto the page....

Here's the XSL file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:output method="xml" omit-xml-declaration="yes" indent="yes"/>
<xsl:template match="*">
<xsl:for-each select="//*[local-name()='item']">
<xsl:if test="position() &lt; 6">
<li>
<a>
<xsl:attribute name="href">
<xsl:value-of select="*[local-name()='link']"/>
</xsl:attribute>
<xsl:attribute name="target">
<xsl:text>top</xsl:text>
</xsl:attribute>
<xsl:value-of select="*[local-name()='title']"/>
</a>
</li>
</xsl:if>
</xsl:for-each>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="/">
<xsl:apply-templates/>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

Let me know if you need to see the ASP portion - thanks everyone in advance!

[Andrew-J2000]

Change the encoding to UTF-8.

 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<%
  Response.Charset="ISO8859-1"
%>

http://www.chilkatsoft.com/ChilkatIConv.asp

[Matt Kitchen]

thanks, changed that, but it didn't fix anything.

[Med]

Make sure you don't save the file as UTF8 and if you should do so, make sure you save it without the BOM. My guess is that the 2 charachters you are seeing is the BOM (Byte Order Mark).

Your text editor might save files out as UTF8 default. If you use BBEdit you can change it in the prefs.

[jimfraser]

In your ASP code, are you doing:

Response.Write DOM.xml
?

If so, try changing it to
DOM.save Response

[Matt Kitchen]

Well, i saved it as UTF-8, No BOM and It looks like it didn't change anything. What should I save it as if i don't use UTF-8? And i should still keep the UTF-8 encoding line in, correct?

I didn't have that line in the ASP, here's what the ASP code looks like:

<%
Sub getXML(sourceFile)
Response.Charset="ISO8859-1"
dim styleFile
dim source, style
styleFile = Server.MapPath("news.xsl")

set source = Server.CreateObject("Msxml2.DomDocument")
source.async = false
source.setProperty "ServerHTTPRequest", true
source.load CStr(sourceFile)

set style = Server.CreateObject("Msxml2.DomDocument")
style.async = false
style.load styleFile

source.transformNodeToObject style, Response
set source = nothing
set style = nothing

End Sub
%>

I'm still at a loss - thanks all for helping though....

[Med]

Well don't save it as UTF8. Sorry if i wasn't clear on that. I was trying to explain the problem with the BOM. Just save it as ISO-8859-1.
Can't help you with the ASP, i know nothing about it...

Good luck

[Matt Kitchen]

OK, no worries. I just found better ASP code. And made it work much smoother. No more problems, but thanks everyone for the help!

[Andrew-J2000]

Sorry change it to

   Response.Charset="UTF-8"