My Netscape Network (MNN) is a free Netcenter service that lets you create your own My Netscape channel.

To create a channel, follow the steps described in this document.

Step 1:   Design and Create Your RDF Site Summary File

First, decide what kind of content you will provide and how you will organize it, based on the template for channels shown in Figure 1. Although you can include any type of content in your channel, your alternatives for formatting are limited to the list of elements supported in RDF Site Summary 0.9, as shown in Figure 1.

Create an RDF Site Summary (RSS) 0.9 file that describes your content.

Name your file using the .rdf suffix, unless you are generating your file dynamically using a .cgi or other program. Netscape recommends the use of the .rdf filename suffix, but does not require it.

Figure 1. Elements of a channel, shown as a user would see them when adding the channel.

Notes:

• You can create only one channel per Netcenter account.

• Your RDF Site Summary (RSS) 0.9 file must be 8 kilobytes or less in size.

• You can include only one channel per RSS 0.9 file.

• You can include up to 15 headlines (items) in your RSS 0.9 file.

• If you use an image in your channel, the image should measure 88 x 31 pixels.

• All tags in your RSS 0.9 file must be lowercase.

• RSS 0.9 supports the full ASCII character set, as well as all legal decimal and HTML entities. RSS 0.9 does not support other types of character data, such as UTF-8. For a list of legal HTML and decimal entities, refer to Special Symbols and Entities on DevEdge, Netscape's information resource for developers.

Figure 2 shows the RSS 0.9 file that describes the channel above. The file shows the required form and syntax of an RSS 0.9 file. This file defines five items of a possible 15 and does not include the optional text input.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<rdf:RDF 
xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
xmlns="http://my.netscape.com/rdf/simple/0.9/">

  <channel>
    <title>Mozilla Dot Org</title>
    <link>http://www.mozilla.org</link>
    <description>the Mozilla Organization 
     web site</description>
  </channel>

  <image>
    <title>Mozilla</title>
    <url>http://www.mozilla.org/images/moz.gif</url>
    <link>http://www.mozilla.org</link>
  </image>

  <item>
    <title>New Status Updates</title>
    <link>http://www.mozilla.org/status/</link>
  </item>

  <item>
    <title>Bugzilla Reorganized</title>
    <link>http://www.mozilla.org/bugs/</link>
  </item>

  <item>
    <title>Mozilla Party, 2.0!</title>
    <link>http://www.mozilla.org/party/1999/</link>
  </item>

  <item>
    <title>Unix Platform Parity</title>
    <link>http://www.mozilla.org/build/unix.html</link>
  </item>

  <item>
    <title>NPL 1.0M published</title>
    <link>http://www.mozilla.org/NPL/NPL-1.0M.html</link>
  </item>

</rdf:RDF>

RSS 0.9 places restrictions on the first non-whitespace characters of the data in <link> and <url> tags. The data in these tags must begin with http://, https://, ftp://, or mailto:. Among others, file: and javascript: are not permitted in <link> and <url> tags.

In subsequent releases, MNN will support an enhanced RSS format. For more information, refer to the MNN Future Directions document.

Special characters in RSS 0.9

RSS 0.9 supports the full ASCII character set, as well as all legal decimal and HTML entities. RSS 0.9 does not support other types of character data, such as UTF-8.

Because an RSS 0.9 file is an XML document, if you want to use special characters such as ampersands (&) in a url or link tags, you must substitute the appropriate decimal or HTML entities for those characters.

Decimal entities have the format &#ref; where ref is a number that references the character (#ref must be between 0-255). Entity references have the format &nnn; where nnn is a text string that references the character.

XML also has reserved characters, such as angle brackets, for which you must use a decimal or entity reference.

As an example, to use the URL:

http://foo.bar.com/mycgi.py?a=1&b;=2

<link>http://foo.bar.com/mycgi.py?a=1&amp;b=2</link>

Table 2 lists common special characters and their decimal and entity equivalents.