Gripes with RSS after one week • Hacker News Board

Re: Gripes with RSS after one week

#11

Post by zwilliamson » Sat, Dec 31, 2022, 6:29 PM UTC

justinator wrote: post #8

zwilliamson wrote: post #4

What if Firefox picked up the proverbial RSS feed torch and took it to the next level?

Well four years ago, they removed support for RSS, so less next level, and more um... a similar level than before.

Maybe a couple git reverts/rebases away from bringing it back? :)

Re: Gripes with RSS after one week

#12

Post by kevincox » Sat, Dec 31, 2022, 6:29 PM UTC

rawling wrote: post #6

> A page can declare an RSS feed using a tag in the something like this: > ... > But browsers won’t surface that to you. Do they not? I thought FF put an icon in the address bar.

It used to.

Now you need an extension for desktop. And I have yet to find an extension that works on mobile.

Chrome is basically the same except that mobile doesn't support extensions at all.

Re: Gripes with RSS after one week

#13

Post by kevincox » Sat, Dec 31, 2022, 6:30 PM UTC

bhouston wrote: post #2

Have you tried Atom: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom_(web_standard)

What benifits does this provide the author? It doesn't seem that atom would fix any of his problems.

Re: Gripes with RSS after one week

#14

Post by docdeek » Sat, Dec 31, 2022, 6:30 PM UTC

Reeder does the discovery for me. If I have a URL I can drop it into the app and it'll find all the RSS feeds (main, comments etc). There's also a browser extension to add straight from there, and it'll add your Read Later list, too, I think as a feed of its own.

Re: Gripes with RSS after one week

#15

Post by pwdisswordfish9 » Sat, Dec 31, 2022, 6:31 PM UTC

zwilliamson wrote: post #4

What if Firefox picked up the proverbial RSS feed torch and took it to the next level?

Sorry, too busy peddling meaningless features like "Colonways" and advertising for Disney.

Re: Gripes with RSS after one week

#16

Post by Semaphor » Sat, Dec 31, 2022, 6:31 PM UTC

Discovery: this has never been an issue for me. I simply assume that anything worthwhile has a feed, and add the base URL to my reader. Almost always tends to be true.

Clients: there are a lot. OP uses some iOS exclusive and the Instagram reader (I always found it the worst of all the post-greader ones, but it seems to appeal to IG and Pinterest people), self hosting is my favorite way.

Re: Gripes with RSS after one week

#17

Post by Teslazar » Sat, Dec 31, 2022, 6:31 PM UTC

This article seems to imply that RSS users need to manually locate the RSS feeds. In all the RSS clients I've used, I just add the site by the main URL and it automatically finds the RSS feed if there is one, and this almost always works.

Re: Gripes with RSS after one week

#18

Post by kevincox » Sat, Dec 31, 2022, 6:31 PM UTC

zwilliamson wrote: post #4

What if Firefox picked up the proverbial RSS feed torch and took it to the next level?

If they would just add the feed detection feature and add a link to subscribe in my RSS reader I would be very happy.

I don't know if I want them actually investing in their own reader. It seems unlikely to add much over the current landscape and just drain resources.

Re: Gripes with RSS after one week

#19

Post by ihuman » Sat, Dec 31, 2022, 6:34 PM UTC

smlavine wrote: post #7

I was going to say that Firefox does show when pages have an RSS feed present, but then I found out it's actually a long-forgotten extension I have installed: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/livemarks/?ut...

Firefox used to have that functionality built in, but they removed it in late 2018

Re: Gripes with RSS after one week

#20

Post by trynewideas » Sat, Dec 31, 2022, 6:36 PM UTC

zwilliamson wrote: post #10

trickjarrett wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wrote about this exact thing. If they gave me a Google Reader-esque product as part of their subscription service for VPN etc., it would get me to subscribe.

I agree. Their email client, Thunderbird, is an amazing open source product. They definitely have the background on how to build a top notch standalone client.

Thunderbird already has an offline Atom/RSS reader, and plugins that sync state with online RSS services like Feedly, so all the pieces are there.