6 ms·

RSS Autodiscovery (2006)

145 points by mawise 3y ago

smusamashah 3y ago
Why Chrome to this date does not support RSS while all browsers that came before chrome had native support to at least read RSS xml files. Try opening any RSS xml feed in chrome, it will appear as plain XML. I hold chrome responsible for decline of RSS.
Havoc 3y ago
Keen to explore RSS again - specifically I'm wondering whether I can somehow integrate Mozilla's readability code into the flow - extract & clean articles as full feeds.
urda 3y ago
I got back on the RSS Train by replacing my third party reddit client with NetNewsWire [1]. I've been enjoying it, and syncs across all my Apple stuff. [1] https://netnewswire.com/ https://netnewswire.com/
zevv 3y ago
Yes, oh yes, please bring this back. Firefox used to have this, I used it a lot. Am I that old? Unfortunately live bookmarks have also gone away in Firefox, luckily I found an add-on for that.
- kevincox 3y ago
  There is an addon for this too https://github.com/Reeywhaar/want-my-rss https://github.com/Reeywhaar/want-my-rss (others available but this is what I use). Although I haven't seen an addon that handles SPA well. Ideally it would monitor the DOM for links being added and removed. Although that may be expensive to do in an extension.
samwillis 3y ago
The '00s were such a wonderful time, the explosion in open access information, mashups (how I miss mashups!), easy publishing and the reach you could get from your sofa. RSS is the epitome of that, it's such a shame we have ended up with these walled garden social publishing platforms that lock our content down. This, adding the RSS icon to the address bar, was an inspired move to surface discoverability. Compare that with the fight to get Apple to surface the availability of PWAs! The big thing that has changed since that time is the monetisation, these walled platforms have had to instigate revenue share with large creators. But still, the wish for a simpler more open web is in the background. There is evidence of a swing back that way (the fediverse, blue sky?), I just hope "big business" doesn't destroy it (the rumour of Facebook embracing the fediverse...). RSS isn't dead, it's the backbone of podcasts, but it's such a shame our Twitter feed, our Facebook, or even our Twitch isn't available as RSS. Back in '06, my "mashup" was a social feed aggregator, it gave you a single "homepage" with all your activity from Myspace, Facebook, Reddit, Digg, Flickr, and many other sites. A lot of that was built on RSS, and you could add any RSS fead to your page. Sadly it went nowhere, but I learnt a lot...
- jakecopp 3y ago
  > RSS isn't dead, it's the backbone of podcasts, but it's such a shame our Twitter feed, our Facebook, or even our Twitch isn't available as RSS. In case you didn't know - you can append .rss at the end of a Mastodon profile url to get an RSS feed of it!
- ozarker 3y ago
  I've been discovering different tools to make the content I consume available via RSS. Some of those tools: nitter: Alternative Twitter frontend that provides RSS feeds teddit: Alternative Reddit frontend that provides RSS feeds (Reddit itself still has RSS feeds, we'll see how that plays out though) rss-bridge: Can generate feeds for a ton of different sites. I use it for Twitch feeds. invidious: Alternative YouTube frontend that provides RSS feeds It's been refreshing to subscribe to the feeds I want to see and not have "recommended" content stepping all over what I want to see. Recent trends make me worried some of these services are going to go away in the near future though.
  - jjordan 3y ago
    Shout-out to the Livemarks / Foxish plugins which gives you RSS support on your Bookmarks toolbar. Still nothing better IMO for quickly browsing dozens of headlines across dozens of sites. Firefox: https://github.com/nt1m/livemarks/ https://github.com/nt1m/livemarks/ Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/foxish-live-rss/nbhdikhnaigcdlamenbgkmllgmfnngoi https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/foxish-live-rss/nb...
  - nordsieck 3y ago
    > invidious: Alternative YouTube frontend that provides RSS feeds Youtube natively offers per-channel rss feeds.
    - throwaway14356 3y ago
      the pupdates are a mess
    - ixwt 3y ago
kevincox 3y ago
> Supported by Mozilla Firefox 2.0, Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0 and other browsers Unfortunately not supported by Mozilla Firefox 114 or Microsoft Edge. It is still a very useful standard. I use https://github.com/Reeywhaar/want-my-rss https://github.com/Reeywhaar/want-my-rss to add the icon to my browser. Plus even without browser support this allows you to just paste an article into your Feed Reader and most will use autodiscovery to find the feed for you. However without a browser icon you need to guess and check.
mawise 3y ago
Most modern RSS feed-readers still use this `rel=alternate` link to allow users to just paste the URL of the site they want to subscribe to instead of forcing the users to look for and find the RSS link somewhere on the page. It's (surprisingly) very broadly implemented among sites and blogs that publish RSS.
ilyt 3y ago
RSS is still only sane way to subscribe to youtube channel, or rather only way that YT managed to not break over the years
- ttepasse 3y ago
  Unfortunately Youtube pushes shorts into the channels feed, presumably because shorts are normal videos under the hood. For a time shorts had the string "#shorts" in their titles which was great for filtering those out but then youtubers started using custom tags. And filtering for "#" seems too risky. I recently found out that my feedreader, Feedbin, allows a media_duration field in their search/action syntax. Now I’m using that experimentally for filtering. Sidenote: Interestingly enough Youtube’s feeds don’t expose duration. Those feeds are ancient, apparently untouched for 15 years. The <media:content> element still advertises its videos as application/x-shockwave-flash. Feedbin, according to its code on Github, does some custom extraction of the duration from the Website for its data model. (Googlers who may read this: Please, for the love of god, don’t change anything. A crappy feed is still better than no feed at all.)
- begriffs 3y ago
  Oh yeah, gotta love the secret feed link. https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=$FOO I follow a number of channels this way. I'm grateful and sort of surprised YouTube hasn't killed it off.
  - rollcat 3y ago
    You don't need the "secret" feed link. You can visit a channel's page directly, and copy the normal URL straight into your feed reader. It will do the right thing - thanks to the <link> tag, which YouTube advertises in the page source - as recommended by TFA. Your feed reader already knows what to do ;)
    - begriffs 3y ago
      Interesting, maybe it depends on the reader. I tried a channel just now in newsboat and it wasn't smart enough to find the feed, even though I see the page contains <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS" href="...">
begriffs 3y ago
I still follow many RSS feeds (about 250). Sometimes it's hard to find the feed on a site, because the feeds aren't always advertised and their URLs can be tricky. Based on the URLs I've seen, I created a simple script to check if a site has a feed: https://github.com/begriffs/findrss https://github.com/begriffs/findrss
superkuh 3y ago
Mozilla removing long standing support for this from Firefox was a clear signal what their browser is for now and what it isn't for. Firefox is for running javascript applications and consuming DRM video and visiting your bank's website, just like chrome. It is not a browser for surfing the web and looking at websites.
- willywanker 3y ago
  Correction, Firefox is controlled opposition for Google to deflect from being accused of having a browser and browser engine monopoly. Mozilla post 2011 is a very different beast; they decided that copying Chrome was the way to go, stripping out all useful features culminating in the removal of the powerful XUL addon system citing security problems (while ironically the amount of malware extensions shot up AFTER they switched to the Chrome originated Web Extensions format, which are far less limited in capability). Meanwhile, the simple minded continue to fall for their claims of respecting privacy and user choice.
- netghost 3y ago
  Honestly the RSS support in Firefox and friends was just never that great. A long time back I used Sage and loved it, but when Firefox moved to use standardized plugins it wasn't an option anymore. So I built Brook, it's pretty simple and hangs out in your sidebar on Firefox: https://github.com/adamsanderson/brook https://github.com/adamsanderson/brook
  - throwaway14356 3y ago
    sage was great
  - superkuh 3y ago
    Mozilla throwing out their entire ecosystem of add-ons (like sage) so they could copy chrome's web extension instead of continuing their own far more powerful extensions was another of the indicators that Firefox is no longer a browser first. It is now a secure JS engine and DRM video first application for commercial transactions. Any ability to be a browser comes after those requirements are met.
rmdes 3y ago
I'm a big fan of FreshRSS (self-hosted) and if I need more powerful feature (such as filtering, dedup, webhooks) I use Inoreader, I have been using at least one rss reader since 2003 and there is no way silo's such as Twitter or others can do better than carefully curating ones own information feed.
- toastal 3y ago
  I started self-hosting Miniflux as a New Year’s resolution. Very simple layout & integrates with Newsboat.
thirdplace_ 3y ago
Related to this topic, I made a website/api that finds feeds for you: https://discovery.thirdplace.no/?q=vimeo.com/user4464579 https://discovery.thirdplace.no/?q=vimeo.com/user4464579 It's pretty rudimentary but alleviates some manual work.
garganzol 3y ago
I suspect that Mozilla got pushed by Google to remove the built-in RSS support surrounding Google+ release. See, decentralized content delivery such as RSS was not friendly enough to ads, so RSS had to be removed for better profits. Needless to say that it was a nail in the coffin of internet information quality.
- willywanker 3y ago
  Google+ was dead on arrival; Mozilla removed RSS support from Firefox long after Google+ was shut down. But of course, they have to dance to the tune of their biggest funder.

145 points by mawise 3y ago

Why Chrome to this date does not support RSS while all browsers that came before chrome had native support to at least read RSS xml files. Try opening any RSS xml feed in chrome, it will appear as plain XML. I hold chrome responsible for decline of RSS.

Havoc 3y ago

Keen to explore RSS again - specifically I'm wondering whether I can somehow integrate Mozilla's readability code into the flow - extract & clean articles as full feeds.

urda 3y ago

I got back on the RSS Train by replacing my third party reddit client with NetNewsWire [1]. I've been enjoying it, and syncs across all my Apple stuff. [1] https://netnewswire.com/ https://netnewswire.com/

zevv 3y ago

Yes, oh yes, please bring this back. Firefox used to have this, I used it a lot. Am I that old? Unfortunately live bookmarks have also gone away in Firefox, luckily I found an add-on for that.

kevincox 3y ago
There is an addon for this too https://github.com/Reeywhaar/want-my-rss https://github.com/Reeywhaar/want-my-rss (others available but this is what I use). Although I haven't seen an addon that handles SPA well. Ideally it would monitor the DOM for links being added and removed. Although that may be expensive to do in an extension.

samwillis 3y ago

The '00s were such a wonderful time, the explosion in open access information, mashups (how I miss mashups!), easy publishing and the reach you could get from your sofa. RSS is the epitome of that, it's such a shame we have ended up with these walled garden social publishing platforms that lock our content down. This, adding the RSS icon to the address bar, was an inspired move to surface discoverability. Compare that with the fight to get Apple to surface the availability of PWAs! The big thing that has changed since that time is the monetisation, these walled platforms have had to instigate revenue share with large creators. But still, the wish for a simpler more open web is in the background. There is evidence of a swing back that way (the fediverse, blue sky?), I just hope "big business" doesn't destroy it (the rumour of Facebook embracing the fediverse...). RSS isn't dead, it's the backbone of podcasts, but it's such a shame our Twitter feed, our Facebook, or even our Twitch isn't available as RSS. Back in '06, my "mashup" was a social feed aggregator, it gave you a single "homepage" with all your activity from Myspace, Facebook, Reddit, Digg, Flickr, and many other sites. A lot of that was built on RSS, and you could add any RSS fead to your page. Sadly it went nowhere, but I learnt a lot...

jakecopp 3y ago
> RSS isn't dead, it's the backbone of podcasts, but it's such a shame our Twitter feed, our Facebook, or even our Twitch isn't available as RSS. In case you didn't know - you can append .rss at the end of a Mastodon profile url to get an RSS feed of it!
ozarker 3y ago
I've been discovering different tools to make the content I consume available via RSS. Some of those tools: nitter: Alternative Twitter frontend that provides RSS feeds teddit: Alternative Reddit frontend that provides RSS feeds (Reddit itself still has RSS feeds, we'll see how that plays out though) rss-bridge: Can generate feeds for a ton of different sites. I use it for Twitch feeds. invidious: Alternative YouTube frontend that provides RSS feeds It's been refreshing to subscribe to the feeds I want to see and not have "recommended" content stepping all over what I want to see. Recent trends make me worried some of these services are going to go away in the near future though.
- jjordan 3y ago
  Shout-out to the Livemarks / Foxish plugins which gives you RSS support on your Bookmarks toolbar. Still nothing better IMO for quickly browsing dozens of headlines across dozens of sites. Firefox: https://github.com/nt1m/livemarks/ https://github.com/nt1m/livemarks/ Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/foxish-live-rss/nbhdikhnaigcdlamenbgkmllgmfnngoi https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/foxish-live-rss/nb...
- nordsieck 3y ago
  > invidious: Alternative YouTube frontend that provides RSS feeds Youtube natively offers per-channel rss feeds.
  - throwaway14356 3y ago
    the pupdates are a mess
  - ixwt 3y ago

kevincox 3y ago

> Supported by Mozilla Firefox 2.0, Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0 and other browsers Unfortunately not supported by Mozilla Firefox 114 or Microsoft Edge. It is still a very useful standard. I use https://github.com/Reeywhaar/want-my-rss https://github.com/Reeywhaar/want-my-rss to add the icon to my browser. Plus even without browser support this allows you to just paste an article into your Feed Reader and most will use autodiscovery to find the feed for you. However without a browser icon you need to guess and check.

mawise 3y ago

Most modern RSS feed-readers still use this `rel=alternate` link to allow users to just paste the URL of the site they want to subscribe to instead of forcing the users to look for and find the RSS link somewhere on the page. It's (surprisingly) very broadly implemented among sites and blogs that publish RSS.

ilyt 3y ago

RSS is still only sane way to subscribe to youtube channel, or rather only way that YT managed to not break over the years

ttepasse 3y ago
Unfortunately Youtube pushes shorts into the channels feed, presumably because shorts are normal videos under the hood. For a time shorts had the string "#shorts" in their titles which was great for filtering those out but then youtubers started using custom tags. And filtering for "#" seems too risky. I recently found out that my feedreader, Feedbin, allows a media_duration field in their search/action syntax. Now I’m using that experimentally for filtering. Sidenote: Interestingly enough Youtube’s feeds don’t expose duration. Those feeds are ancient, apparently untouched for 15 years. The <media:content> element still advertises its videos as application/x-shockwave-flash. Feedbin, according to its code on Github, does some custom extraction of the duration from the Website for its data model. (Googlers who may read this: Please, for the love of god, don’t change anything. A crappy feed is still better than no feed at all.)
begriffs 3y ago
Oh yeah, gotta love the secret feed link. https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=$FOO I follow a number of channels this way. I'm grateful and sort of surprised YouTube hasn't killed it off.
- rollcat 3y ago
  You don't need the "secret" feed link. You can visit a channel's page directly, and copy the normal URL straight into your feed reader. It will do the right thing - thanks to the <link> tag, which YouTube advertises in the page source - as recommended by TFA. Your feed reader already knows what to do ;)
  - begriffs 3y ago
    Interesting, maybe it depends on the reader. I tried a channel just now in newsboat and it wasn't smart enough to find the feed, even though I see the page contains <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS" href="...">

begriffs 3y ago

I still follow many RSS feeds (about 250). Sometimes it's hard to find the feed on a site, because the feeds aren't always advertised and their URLs can be tricky. Based on the URLs I've seen, I created a simple script to check if a site has a feed: https://github.com/begriffs/findrss https://github.com/begriffs/findrss

superkuh 3y ago

Mozilla removing long standing support for this from Firefox was a clear signal what their browser is for now and what it isn't for. Firefox is for running javascript applications and consuming DRM video and visiting your bank's website, just like chrome. It is not a browser for surfing the web and looking at websites.

willywanker 3y ago
Correction, Firefox is controlled opposition for Google to deflect from being accused of having a browser and browser engine monopoly. Mozilla post 2011 is a very different beast; they decided that copying Chrome was the way to go, stripping out all useful features culminating in the removal of the powerful XUL addon system citing security problems (while ironically the amount of malware extensions shot up AFTER they switched to the Chrome originated Web Extensions format, which are far less limited in capability). Meanwhile, the simple minded continue to fall for their claims of respecting privacy and user choice.
netghost 3y ago
Honestly the RSS support in Firefox and friends was just never that great. A long time back I used Sage and loved it, but when Firefox moved to use standardized plugins it wasn't an option anymore. So I built Brook, it's pretty simple and hangs out in your sidebar on Firefox: https://github.com/adamsanderson/brook https://github.com/adamsanderson/brook
- throwaway14356 3y ago
  sage was great
- superkuh 3y ago
  Mozilla throwing out their entire ecosystem of add-ons (like sage) so they could copy chrome's web extension instead of continuing their own far more powerful extensions was another of the indicators that Firefox is no longer a browser first. It is now a secure JS engine and DRM video first application for commercial transactions. Any ability to be a browser comes after those requirements are met.

rmdes 3y ago

I'm a big fan of FreshRSS (self-hosted) and if I need more powerful feature (such as filtering, dedup, webhooks) I use Inoreader, I have been using at least one rss reader since 2003 and there is no way silo's such as Twitter or others can do better than carefully curating ones own information feed.

toastal 3y ago
I started self-hosting Miniflux as a New Year’s resolution. Very simple layout & integrates with Newsboat.

thirdplace_ 3y ago

Related to this topic, I made a website/api that finds feeds for you: https://discovery.thirdplace.no/?q=vimeo.com/user4464579 https://discovery.thirdplace.no/?q=vimeo.com/user4464579 It's pretty rudimentary but alleviates some manual work.

garganzol 3y ago

I suspect that Mozilla got pushed by Google to remove the built-in RSS support surrounding Google+ release. See, decentralized content delivery such as RSS was not friendly enough to ads, so RSS had to be removed for better profits. Needless to say that it was a nail in the coffin of internet information quality.

willywanker 3y ago
Google+ was dead on arrival; Mozilla removed RSS support from Firefox long after Google+ was shut down. But of course, they have to dance to the tune of their biggest funder.