This is a feature of firefox, although it may have been removed from firefox 4beta ( at least in default set up, no idea why). The appearance of the RSS icon within the location bar is intended to inform that RSS feeds are available from the site in use. You may note that this firefox forum we are using has such an icon displaying in the location bar, that is because feeds are available allowing you to track the threads, no doubt something similar happens with the SMF forum you mention.

If it is possible to remove the RSS icon from the location bar it will certainly not be straightforward, other than by upgrading to 4beta, and that is available now, and may be run whilst the stable version firefox 3.6 is still installed on your computer. (iirc there is an add-on available to add the rss icon to Fx4)

If a post answers your enquiry, you may wish to use the button alongside it to mark it as solved.

• for more about Firefox 4Beta and its download click this

John99 - I am not sure if you have completely understood koala's situation.

It's not that the RSS icon is or is not appearing: it sounds the same as my issue. When I login to my forum at http://heymalc.com/forum instead of seeing the forum home page I am shown a page which in in the address bar, says it's .xml, but actually it's not: Google reader says it is malformed.

I am using FDF 3.6

I had this exact same situation wiht another forum I have had this in the past with another SMF forum I used to use regularly.

This does not happen with IE.

Maybe it won't happen with FF 4 - when I am brave enough to upgrade (I fear plugin conflicts for the next couple of weeks... but looking forward to the speed)

Malc

Thank you for your replies. It seems that since I installed FF4 the problem has now gone. I also reinstalled my SMF forum manually and everything is now working as it should.

@ koalablue,
Glad the problem is sorted out. Sorry If I misunderstood.

I had made the assumption that perhaps the problem SMF forum did include feeds. The Firefox Help forum we are currently using does. You are for instance able to subscribe to the thread we are in. Note there is a button top right saying Subscribe to feed .

@ malcsim,
The example you linked to requires registration so I did not look any further than the home page, but that opened ok, although I checked using Firefox 5.

I suppose there is a possibility it is a design problem with that site rather than a problem with Firefox.

The first to try with such issues is to reload and bypass the cache. If that still doesn't work then clear the cache and the cookies from that web page.

Reload web page(s) and bypass the cache.

• Press and hold Shift and left-click the Reload button.
• Press "Ctrl + F5" or press "Ctrl + Shift + R" (Windows,Linux)
• Press "Cmd + Shift + R" (MAC)

Clear the cache and the cookies from sites that cause problems.

• "Clear the Cache": Tools > Options > Advanced > Network > Offline Storage (Cache): "Clear Now"
• "Remove the Cookies" from sites causing problems: Tools > Options > Privacy > Cookies: "Show Cookies"