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I've been advocating for RSS support, and you should too

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Re: I've been advocating for RSS support, and you should too

#21

Post by devmor »

grumbel wrote: post #15

If RSS could solve the problem it would have done so a decade ago. The core issue is that browsers have completely failed at offering anything to keep track of websites. Why aren't notifications simply build into the bookmark system? I don't need the website to provide that information via yet another special format, my browser should be able to figure that out itself from plain .html. But bookmarks haven't changed o…

God wouldn't that be simple and novel? Check a box when you bookmark a website and your browser polls it every so often for updates and gives you a little badge like a mobile app icon.

No need for JS workers or push servers.

Re: I've been advocating for RSS support, and you should too

#22

Post by mg »

If you have an application that does not support RSS/atom yet, you can easily add support with a few lines of Python.

Or use an open source module. Here is a general atom feed generator that I wrote and published under the GPL:

https://github.com/no-gravity/atomfeed.py

Just 14 lines of Python. And it has been reliably serving the feed for my own website for quite a while now.

Re: I've been advocating for RSS support, and you should too

#23

Post by entuno »

palata wrote: post #3

RSS is great. Most blog engines support RSS by default. Podcasts typically use RSS (even if the app goes to great length to hide it). I sometimes wonder why there is so much push for "federation" and so few for... well just simple interoperable solutions that just require a client to connect to whatever server it wants with a well-known protocol.

Where I have RSS feeds from news sites, I usually skim down the list of titles, read an article (in my feed) if it's interesting, and then move on. I never visit their website, I don't see their adverts, their tracking scripts can't run, and I don't see or interact with their comments.

Which is great for me as the end user - but makes it much harder for them to monetise.

Re: I've been advocating for RSS support, and you should too

#24

Post by rambambram »

medhir wrote: post #17

I recently had a popular post on HN and several people reached out asking if I had an RSS feed implemented. Was surprised that anyone would be interested in keeping up with my writing, but was happy to oblige the request as it had been on my to-do list for a while. Happy I did do as it seems many people are hitting the RSS endpoint now. Cool to see that RSS is relevant in 2025, and will definitely advocate for its us…

I might have been one of these people, because I was following your site as a bookmark in my RSS reader already. I didn't see any content in your feed so I checked again for a feed endpoint. I found it eventually on your site, but you might consider making it auto-discoverable (see https://www.rssboard.org/rss-autodiscovery). People only have to enter your domain name into their RSS reader then.

Re: I've been advocating for RSS support, and you should too

#25

Post by donatj »

defrost wrote: post #8

As a general PSA, youtube channels have an RSS feed to alert you when a favourite creator releases a new video. The form is https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UC2wdo5v... where channel_id is the channel hash code which is buried in the source for the "nicely named" channel: https://www.youtube.com/@CuttingEdgeEngineering and can be found without source diving via (say) FeedBro (RSS browser extension)…

That's good to know. The number of times I have subscribed to someone on YouTube only to not see anything from them in years, and then find tens of their videos YouTube never offered is just insane.

So many times I can't find anything to watch on YouTube and it just isn't showing me any of my subscriptions, it's ridiculous.

Re: I've been advocating for RSS support, and you should too

#26

Post by mongol »

palata wrote: post #3

RSS is great. Most blog engines support RSS by default. Podcasts typically use RSS (even if the app goes to great length to hide it). I sometimes wonder why there is so much push for "federation" and so few for... well just simple interoperable solutions that just require a client to connect to whatever server it wants with a well-known protocol.

> Podcasts typically use RSS

I would even say that a podcast that does not support RSS is not a podcast, it is something else.

Re: I've been advocating for RSS support, and you should too

#27

Post by [deleted] »

devmor wrote: post #21
grumbel wrote: post #15

If RSS could solve the problem it would have done so a decade ago. The core issue is that browsers have completely failed at offering anything to keep track of websites. Why aren't notifications simply build into the bookmark system? I don't need the website to provide that information via yet another special format, my browser should be able to figure that out itself from plain .html. But bookmarks haven't changed o…

God wouldn't that be simple and novel? Check a box when you bookmark a website and your browser polls it every so often for updates and gives you a little badge like a mobile app icon. No need for JS workers or push servers.

[deleted]

Re: I've been advocating for RSS support, and you should too

#28

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

donatj wrote: post #25
defrost wrote: post #8

As a general PSA, youtube channels have an RSS feed to alert you when a favourite creator releases a new video. The form is https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UC2wdo5v... where channel_id is the channel hash code which is buried in the source for the "nicely named" channel: https://www.youtube.com/@CuttingEdgeEngineering and can be found without source diving via (say) FeedBro (RSS browser extension)…

That's good to know. The number of times I have subscribed to someone on YouTube only to not see anything from them in years, and then find tens of their videos YouTube never offered is just insane. So many times I can't find anything to watch on YouTube and it just isn't showing me any of my subscriptions, it's ridiculous.

The opposite problem is also bad: subscribe to a channel, then get frequent notifications of years-old videos.

Re: I've been advocating for RSS support, and you should too

#29

Post by medhir »

6510 wrote: post #18
medhir wrote: post #17

I recently had a popular post on HN and several people reached out asking if I had an RSS feed implemented. Was surprised that anyone would be interested in keeping up with my writing, but was happy to oblige the request as it had been on my to-do list for a while. Happy I did do as it seems many people are hitting the RSS endpoint now. Cool to see that RSS is relevant in 2025, and will definitely advocate for its us…

How long did it take you to implement? I never bothered to make a list of the mails I send but now I see it is quite useful to show how well it works. Maybe some data on implementation time would be as useful.

Took me a few hours. I use MDX for formatting so most of the time was spent figuring out how to convert the MDX to plain HTML. Not a very heavy lift overall :)

Re: I've been advocating for RSS support, and you should too

#30

Post by theanonymousone »

I have some app/service ideas which all involve "informing" the user about something.

Implementations of this notification mechanism are either spammy, privacy-problematic, or both: (Web) Push notifications, Email, or Messages.

The only solution that doesn't have either of these problems seems to be RSS: Provide the user with (customised) feed link and let them/their RSS client deal with it.

I really wish RSS was less niche and more mainstream. I will "advocate" for it regardless.

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