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Deep dive into finding RSS feeds

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Re: Deep dive into finding RSS feeds

#42

Tried out the feed finder on my blog again and I have another bug to report - it seems the URLs on the page can cause a crash within the web app! my blog (at matthew.science) uses Zola SSG, and it seems the URLs are formatted with a preceding //: ' Basics of the RISC-V ISA ' This causes the following error: TypeError: URL constructor: //matthew.science/posts/riscv/ is not a valid URL.

Thank you! Didn't see that case yet but I'm glad you commented, now I can fix it

Re: Deep dive into finding RSS feeds

#43

Does it correctly ignore the “Comments on:” feeds that are sometimes mistakenly chosen over the main feed?

It shows all feeds it finds, including comments feeds. It also shows a preview of feed content, so it's easy to see if it's only articles or also comments.

Re: Deep dive into finding RSS feeds

#44
Its interesting to contemplate an RSS-first browser that would have this functionality built-in. Think for example of promoting to full browser status a desktop RSS reader like Akregator [1] (which already embeds a webview).

The browser as we now know it is mostly a static application that has long lost its user-centric mission. Websites might push some stuff but the user must do thinks manually. Its primary function is to provide a search window to external search. People even stopped using bookmarks and search for everything.

This hypothetical RSS-Browser could become the main organizational tool for the users web experience, integrating the use of bookmarks.

In fact even more "feeds" could be integrated like email and activitypub or atproto posts. It boils down to the fact that each person has a number of profiles/roles and within each they have a taxonomy of interests and we need a tool that integrates static and dynamic sources of information.

[1] https://apps.kde.org/akregator/

Re: Deep dive into finding RSS feeds

#45
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even better, for a few months the browsers themselves would highlight RSS feeds and allow you subscribe right in the browser. It was too good to last. RSS is great but it has one great flaw in that it doesn't scale that well by itself. If 2 million people subscribe to your feed and try to update it once an hour, that is 48 million requests a day just for RSS. What does work well (and how things have evolved) is to ha…

> Even better, for a few months the browsers themselves would highlight RSS feeds and allow you subscribe right in the browser. It was too good to last. I use the Awesome RSS add-on for that in Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/awesome-rss/

Firefox removing RSS support was their capitulation in supporting the open web.

Re: Deep dive into finding RSS feeds

#46
post #45
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even better, for a few months the browsers themselves would highlight RSS feeds and allow you subscribe right in the browser. It was too good to last. I use the Awesome RSS add-on for that in Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/awesome-rss/

Firefox removing RSS support was their capitulation in supporting the open web.

That is very ambiguous phrasing.

Re: Deep dive into finding RSS feeds

#47

Back when I was young, websites had this icon you could click that would take you straight to their RSS feed. You young whipper snappers have gone an fucked that up. Actually, I think it was Google's fault. When they killed their RSS reader people pronounced RSS dead so people just stopped publishing RSS feeds or just didn't link to them. * Yes, I know the article talks about the RSS icon, i'm just soapboxing.

I was about to say, that was all Google.

I'm still continually astounded that the tech community appeared to absolutely swallow Google's utter bullshit answers about why they shut down Reader; that really marked a turning point.

Re: Deep dive into finding RSS feeds

#48

Back when I was young, websites had this icon you could click that would take you straight to their RSS feed. You young whipper snappers have gone an fucked that up. Actually, I think it was Google's fault. When they killed their RSS reader people pronounced RSS dead so people just stopped publishing RSS feeds or just didn't link to them. * Yes, I know the article talks about the RSS icon, i'm just soapboxing.

Even better, for a few months the browsers themselves would highlight RSS feeds and allow you subscribe right in the browser. It was too good to last. RSS is great but it has one great flaw in that it doesn't scale that well by itself. If 2 million people subscribe to your feed and try to update it once an hour, that is 48 million requests a day just for RSS. What does work well (and how things have evolved) is to ha…

But that's just a Cloudflare problem, no?

Re: Deep dive into finding RSS feeds

#49
post #42

Tried out the feed finder on my blog again and I have another bug to report - it seems the URLs on the page can cause a crash within the web app! my blog (at matthew.science) uses Zola SSG, and it seems the URLs are formatted with a preceding //: ' Basics of the RISC-V ISA ' This causes the following error: TypeError: URL constructor: //matthew.science/posts/riscv/ is not a valid URL.

Thank you! Didn't see that case yet but I'm glad you commented, now I can fix it

Update: it's fixed

Re: Deep dive into finding RSS feeds

#50
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even better, for a few months the browsers themselves would highlight RSS feeds and allow you subscribe right in the browser. It was too good to last. RSS is great but it has one great flaw in that it doesn't scale that well by itself. If 2 million people subscribe to your feed and try to update it once an hour, that is 48 million requests a day just for RSS. What does work well (and how things have evolved) is to ha…

> RSS is great but it has one great flaw in that it doesn't scale that well by itself. If 2 million people subscribe to your feed and try to update it once an hour, that is 48 million requests a day just for RSS. Who's updating their RSS feeds once an hour 24 hours a day? Anyway, a very popular site with that many millions of visitors already has to handle extreme traffic, regardless of RSS.

“Who's updating their RSS feeds once an hour 24 hours a day?”

RSS is a pull-type system, no?. So the end-user is causing the overload problem by hitting the publisher’s RSS feed every hour? The problem is out of the hands of the publisher…

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