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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

#71

Post by christkv »

gudzpoz wrote: post #64

Speaking of advocating RSS, I was trying out Nikola [0] for static site generation and found that they have a really nice-looking RSS end-point [1] that is viewable both from the browser and an RSS reader. Looking into the XML, it turns out it's called xml-stylesheet: And I would argue that this is an excellent way to introduce new readers to RSS: instead of the browser popping up a download prompt, you can make your…

Man what a blast from the past. There was a moment in time where xml and xlst was considered the bright future of webapps

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

#72

Post by nxtbl »

Been doing that, but especially in the last few years sites have been dropping RSS support and won't bring it back no matter how you reason for it.

For example, job seeking sites:

https://tyomarkkinatori.fi/ is the national "job market" for the whole of Finland. Municipal and state employers are obligated to publish their openings there. That site has been in development for years and from 1.1.2025 onwards it replaced the old one - which supplied RSS feeds. Tyomarkkinatori does not and when asked, they will only reply that RSS is not going to be supported and that's the end of it.

https://indeed.com doesn't provide feeds anymore.

Neither does (yet another Finnish aggregator) https://laura.fi

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

#73

Post by rook1e_dev »

freetonik wrote: post #14
rook1e_dev wrote: post #11

RSS is my main source of information. And I've built some RSS-related projects: 1. https://github.com/0x2E/fusion - A lightweight, self-hosted friendly RSS aggregator and reader 2. https://rawweb.org/ - A search engine for indie websites (the crawler collects data from RSS feeds) 3. https://github.com/0x2E/rss-finder - A tool for finding the RSS link of a website

Rawweb is very cool! Curious, have you implemented your own crawler, RSS parser and search engine?

Crawler is a simple HTTP requester + RSS parser. Full-text searching uses Elasticsearch.

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

#74

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

akvadrako wrote: post #70
oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #13

> Please advocate for more RSS support - especially with orgs you want to stay up-to-date with. Also advocate for support with browser manufacturers. It used to be good, then one of them dropped it and the others blindly followed. People clearly want the RSS button, why on earth not provide it?

I use RSS heavily and I don't want an RSS button - what would that even do? RSS is best when integrated with a stateful server-side reader. Whatever comes with the browser will not be as good as an extension from a company focused on that feature. For example I use https://www.inoreader.com/

> what would that even do?

Open the current page's RSS feed in my configured client. Failing that, copy its URL. Absolute minimum, it's a shortcut for having to view source, cmd-f, "RSS", cmd-c

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

#75

Post by entuno »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #51
entuno wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> makes it much harder for them to monetise. On the other hand, RSS definitely provides extra opportunities to monitise. Imagine your business provides a customisable "offers" feed so you can tell interested parties when a sale occurs, etc. Businesses should be falling over themselves to get that kind of engagement.

That just sounds like a mailing list, but without the ability to easily identify and track the individuals you're sending to.

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

#76

Post by _Algernon_ »

beretguy wrote: post #61
rplnt wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people also decided it's a good idea to use browser from an advertising company. RSS is not good for business and it won't be provided.

> Most people also decide Most people didn't decide. Most people were tricked into using chrome. Most people are not computer literate.

[flagged]

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

#77

Post by entuno »

saint_yossarian wrote: post #44
entuno wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nobody's forcing them to put the full text into the feed, for me the main benefit is not having to check the site manually.

As the consumer, that's a big benefit, and the main reason I use RSS.

But for the company running the website, the fact that you're no longer browsing to their site, being served adverts and tracking code, and seeing what's on their homepage is not a benefit

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

#78

Post by EvanAnderson »

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)…

I worry about YouTube RSS feeds getting popular and Google killing them. Every time I see them discussed publicly I have this "Ssshh! Keep it on the down low!" reaction.

I browse YouTube anonymously, have an ad blocker setup that pretty much eliminates all ads, and track my "subscriptions" with RSS. It's highly usable. I use a fork of tt-rss and actually embed the YouTube videos in the reader pane so I never see any of YouTube's algorithmic recommendation schlock (beyond recommendations at the end of videos, which I ignore). Browsing YouTube, the site, is a jarring nightmare.

I am considering having my podcatcher use a YouTube downloader to just pull down all the videos in the feeds I watch. I believe Google is throttling yt-dlp to realtime speeds, but I figure if my podcatcher is doing it behind the scenes that shouldn't matter. I maintain curated collections of podcasts I like (in case they ever disappear), and since I just added 40TB if storage to my home system I figure it's time to do that with YouTube too.

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

#79

Post by PeterStuer »

gudzpoz wrote: post #64

Speaking of advocating RSS, I was trying out Nikola [0] for static site generation and found that they have a really nice-looking RSS end-point [1] that is viewable both from the browser and an RSS reader. Looking into the XML, it turns out it's called xml-stylesheet: And I would argue that this is an excellent way to introduce new readers to RSS: instead of the browser popping up a download prompt, you can make your…

My suggestion for best practice would be to have a feed endpoint that is as minimal and clean as possible, and provide a separate endpoint (can be the same base url but with a parameter) for human consumption. This ensures maximal compatibility and ease of consumption for both machine and human.

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

#80

Post by PeterStuer »

akvadrako wrote: post #70
oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #13

> Please advocate for more RSS support - especially with orgs you want to stay up-to-date with. Also advocate for support with browser manufacturers. It used to be good, then one of them dropped it and the others blindly followed. People clearly want the RSS button, why on earth not provide it?

I use RSS heavily and I don't want an RSS button - what would that even do? RSS is best when integrated with a stateful server-side reader. Whatever comes with the browser will not be as good as an extension from a company focused on that feature. For example I use https://www.inoreader.com/

Easy notification that a feed is present and an option.
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