6 ms·

This list should include an exhortation to add an xml-stylesheet processing instruction to your feed, so people who have no idea what RSS is aren't dumped into

This list should include an exhortation to add an xml-stylesheet processing instruction to your feed, so people who have no idea what RSS is aren't dumped into a blob of raw XML before backing out and concluding that they're not supposed to be there. There's an already-baked XSL template available on aboutfeeds.com that you can pretty trivially copy onto your Web server and link to from your feed. We're better off if more people are aware of RSS, and having a simple way to teach them is useful.

mariusor 4y ago
That sounds interesting. Do you have an example of this in the wild?
- kevincox 4y ago
  FeedBurner is well know for doing this. For example https://feeds.feedburner.com/GoogleAppsUpdates https://feeds.feedburner.com/GoogleAppsUpdates
  - mkr-hn 4y ago
    I know it used to be that, but it looks like an ordinary HTML web page now.
    - kevincox 4y ago
      Hmm, I swear that I viewed source and saw XML but you are right. It is definitely just HTML now.
- pwdisswordfish9 4y ago
  Here's the RSS for the blog of the aboutfeeds.com maintainer (genmon here on HN—including here in the comments to this submission): <https://interconnected.org/home/feed https://interconnected.org/home/feed> If you wanted an informal list of people making use of this pretty-feed.xsl specifically, it would be possible to solicit that sort of thing through GitHub and see if others come out of the woodwork to identify themselves.
  - mariusor 4y ago
    Thank you, this is helpful. :)
- chrismorgan 4y ago
  I offer my site as another example: https://chrismorgan.info/blog/tags/make/feed.xml https://chrismorgan.info/blog/tags/make/feed.xml (a subset chosen, just because the feed with everything is fairly large and loads stuff from a few origins). Stylesheet at https://chrismorgan.info/atom.xsl https://chrismorgan.info/atom.xsl. This is considerably more correct, robust and featureful than any others I’ve seen, just because I could (I don’t even use most of the stuff I’ve implemented for it, though some like enclosures I have draft content using). It handles Atom’s text constructs (where content can be provided in XHTML, HTML or text format), and the common attributes xml:lang and xml:base, none of which I’ve seen any other stylesheet handle correctly. I also produced an RSS variant, since you basically have to use the inferior RSS for podcasts. That’s not in use on my site at this time, so I’ve dropped a copy at https://temp.chrismorgan.info/2022-05-10-rss.xsl https://temp.chrismorgan.info/2022-05-10-rss.xsl for now. But please, use Atom. RSS is a lousy format that causes some genuine problems and should have been completely retired fifteen years ago, and the only thing that actually needs it still is podcasts.

mariusor 4y ago

That sounds interesting. Do you have an example of this in the wild?

kevincox 4y ago
FeedBurner is well know for doing this. For example https://feeds.feedburner.com/GoogleAppsUpdates https://feeds.feedburner.com/GoogleAppsUpdates
- mkr-hn 4y ago
  I know it used to be that, but it looks like an ordinary HTML web page now.
  - kevincox 4y ago
    Hmm, I swear that I viewed source and saw XML but you are right. It is definitely just HTML now.
pwdisswordfish9 4y ago
Here's the RSS for the blog of the aboutfeeds.com maintainer (genmon here on HN—including here in the comments to this submission): <https://interconnected.org/home/feed https://interconnected.org/home/feed> If you wanted an informal list of people making use of this pretty-feed.xsl specifically, it would be possible to solicit that sort of thing through GitHub and see if others come out of the woodwork to identify themselves.
- mariusor 4y ago
  Thank you, this is helpful. :)
chrismorgan 4y ago
I offer my site as another example: https://chrismorgan.info/blog/tags/make/feed.xml https://chrismorgan.info/blog/tags/make/feed.xml (a subset chosen, just because the feed with everything is fairly large and loads stuff from a few origins). Stylesheet at https://chrismorgan.info/atom.xsl https://chrismorgan.info/atom.xsl. This is considerably more correct, robust and featureful than any others I’ve seen, just because I could (I don’t even use most of the stuff I’ve implemented for it, though some like enclosures I have draft content using). It handles Atom’s text constructs (where content can be provided in XHTML, HTML or text format), and the common attributes xml:lang and xml:base, none of which I’ve seen any other stylesheet handle correctly. I also produced an RSS variant, since you basically have to use the inferior RSS for podcasts. That’s not in use on my site at this time, so I’ve dropped a copy at https://temp.chrismorgan.info/2022-05-10-rss.xsl https://temp.chrismorgan.info/2022-05-10-rss.xsl for now. But please, use Atom. RSS is a lousy format that causes some genuine problems and should have been completely retired fifteen years ago, and the only thing that actually needs it still is podcasts.