6 ms·

Exposed RSS

116 points by alexzeitler 3y ago

butz 3y ago
/me shakes fist at general direction of Firefox for removing RSS button, as the browser should be the one informing the user about additional features that website provides.
- teddyh 3y ago
  <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/want-my-rss/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/want-my-rss/>
  - kevincox 3y ago
    This is what I use as well. I hope it gets support for Firefox Android some day.
    - teddyh 3y ago
      For Firefox Android, there’s <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/awesome-rss/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/awesome-rss/>
      - kevincox 3y ago
        It seems to lack a customizable destination which is a non-starter for me.
- breput 3y ago
  https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/drop-feeds/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/drop-feeds/ is probably the most feature-rich RSS extension for Firefox (desktop)
- egz 3y ago
  totally agree that this should be a built-in browser feature... in safari there's this paid ($1) extension: https://rssdiscovery.app https://rssdiscovery.app
aa_is_op 3y ago
My favorite Firefox feature was a button that copied a site's RSS feed to your clipboard. Sadly, they removed it a while back.
- orenlindsey 3y ago
  https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/want-my-rss/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/want-my-rss/
  - aa_is_op 3y ago
    Thank you! But the reason I used that feature was because it was Mozilla official code and not some third-party add-on that might get sold behind my back three months later.
    - senkora 3y ago
      I sometimes extract a browser extension’s source and manually install it, if I find it useful, so that my copy will never turn into spyware or be removed from the store.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- ijhuygft776 3y ago
  Sometime I wonder if their main revenue source (Google) asked them to remove features like this one...
fmajid 3y ago
My feed reader just tries a variety of URLs if the page doesn't have autodiscovery. It works surprisingly well: https://github.com/fazalmajid/temboz/blob/master/tembozapp/autodiscovery.py https://github.com/fazalmajid/temboz/blob/master/tembozapp/a...
- velcrovan 3y ago
  Of course, my hand-rolled site (https://joeldueck.com https://joeldueck.com) uses feed.atom (don’t ask me why, it was a long time ago), which happens not to be in your list. I do have it exposed in the HTML though.
  - uneekname 3y ago
    ...presumably using your splitflap project in Racket, which I use for my own site! Thank you for your work on it.
    - velcrovan 3y ago
      Thanks! I have zero idea how many people use it, so running into someone who does is very encouraging.
  - fmajid 3y ago
    I add them as I find new ones. Note that your site throws the following exception in my locked-down browser where cookies and other persistent storage is disabled unless explicitly allowlisted: failed to read the 'localstorage' property from 'window': access is denied for this document.
anthonyryan1 3y ago
Even worse than this are sites that have RSS feeds and Cloudflare in front. Because my RSS reader doesn't look much different than a bot, and won't complete Cloudflare's CAPTCHA.
- djbusby 3y ago
  My feed reader is a swlf-hosted in Linode. I get blocked by Captcha too - but Cloudflare loves my home IP. Wireguard to the rescue.
- Scion9066 3y ago
  I'm wondering if you could use something like FlareSolverr to bypass the Cloudflare CAPTCHAs. I'm a little surprised an RSS feed itself would be rate limited/protected though.
- KTibow 3y ago
  I was running into something similar when I was accessing the API of someone's MediaWiki instance and adding User-Agent was enough to solve the problem
Fileformat 3y ago
I always like to put a link to the RSS in the actual HTML (i.e. so a human can see it) However, clicking it is horrible UX: a wall of text. Or even worse (shaking fist at Firefox), a download "Save as..." prompt. So... <shameless self promotion> I made Feed.Style[0] to help people make it be a semi-presentable page by adding an XSLT stylesheet.</shame> I have a couple of examples (of HN and high-ranking HNers natch ;) and found a fair number of bugs^H^H^H^H non-optimal choices in their feeds, probably because XML is not all that human-readable, even for devs. Source [1] is MIT-licensed and is completely static, except for the examples, which are just an optional hack running on Cloudflare pages. Feedback welcome! [0] https://www.feed.style/ https://www.feed.style/ [1] https://github.com/fileformat/feed.style https://github.com/fileformat/feed.style
- SquareWheel 3y ago
  I've seen RSS styling before but it does feel like an oddity. I think I'm so used to the code view that when I see a styled feed page, it makes me wonder if I'm on the real URL. But at least the page does explain itself. As a side note, it seems like a number of your "after" examples do not load. HN hug, or something else?
  - Fileformat 3y ago
    Hmm... The examples are running on the free tier of Cloudflare Pages Functions. I should be dramatically under any CPU/networking/transfer limits. And it should scale up as needed. I just tried all of them now, and they did load. What is the exact error you are seeing? Just a blank page or ??? If you mean that the input box for "copy to clipboard" is empty, that's because the feed doesn't have a "self" link, which the stylesheet needs.
    - SquareWheel 3y ago
      I'm not sure then. The first two "after" examples were blank for me. I tried again now and the first loaded, but second did not. After another few refreshes, it did load, though as you said the "copy and paste" link was blank. I tried it in Firefox and got an XML parsing error[1] instead. Again refreshed and it loaded fine. So it seems intermittent at best. [1] Error follows: XML Parsing Error: mismatched tag. Expected: </link>. Location: https://www.feed.style/example.xml?feedurl=https%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombinator.com%2Fshowrss Line Number 6, Column 3:
herbertl 3y ago
I just recently found out that you can add /feed after a Substack publication's URL and subscribe via RSS. (e.g., https://[publication].substack.com/feed https://[publication].substack.com/feed)
- microflash 3y ago
  You can do something similar with Buttondown: https://buttondown.email/<publisher>/rss https://buttondown.email/<publisher>/rss (for example, https://buttondown.email/j2kun/rss https://buttondown.email/j2kun/rss)
6510 3y ago
You can also have a discoverable OPML with many interesting feeds in it. I'm not aware of any clients that can find it but I think it useful enough for someone to one day implement it. Seeing just one feed appear in your aggregator just for the page you are looking at right now (while very useful later on) isn't as exciting as 10 or 100 new sub worthy subjects.

116 points by alexzeitler 3y ago

butz 3y ago

/me shakes fist at general direction of Firefox for removing RSS button, as the browser should be the one informing the user about additional features that website provides.

teddyh 3y ago
<https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/want-my-rss/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/want-my-rss/>
- kevincox 3y ago
  This is what I use as well. I hope it gets support for Firefox Android some day.
  - teddyh 3y ago
    For Firefox Android, there’s <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/awesome-rss/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/awesome-rss/>
    - kevincox 3y ago
      It seems to lack a customizable destination which is a non-starter for me.
breput 3y ago
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/drop-feeds/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/drop-feeds/ is probably the most feature-rich RSS extension for Firefox (desktop)
egz 3y ago
totally agree that this should be a built-in browser feature... in safari there's this paid ($1) extension: https://rssdiscovery.app https://rssdiscovery.app

aa_is_op 3y ago

My favorite Firefox feature was a button that copied a site's RSS feed to your clipboard. Sadly, they removed it a while back.

orenlindsey 3y ago
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/want-my-rss/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/want-my-rss/
- aa_is_op 3y ago
  Thank you! But the reason I used that feature was because it was Mozilla official code and not some third-party add-on that might get sold behind my back three months later.
  - senkora 3y ago
    I sometimes extract a browser extension’s source and manually install it, if I find it useful, so that my copy will never turn into spyware or be removed from the store.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
ijhuygft776 3y ago
Sometime I wonder if their main revenue source (Google) asked them to remove features like this one...

fmajid 3y ago

My feed reader just tries a variety of URLs if the page doesn't have autodiscovery. It works surprisingly well: https://github.com/fazalmajid/temboz/blob/master/tembozapp/autodiscovery.py https://github.com/fazalmajid/temboz/blob/master/tembozapp/a...

velcrovan 3y ago
Of course, my hand-rolled site (https://joeldueck.com https://joeldueck.com) uses feed.atom (don’t ask me why, it was a long time ago), which happens not to be in your list. I do have it exposed in the HTML though.
- uneekname 3y ago
  ...presumably using your splitflap project in Racket, which I use for my own site! Thank you for your work on it.
  - velcrovan 3y ago
    Thanks! I have zero idea how many people use it, so running into someone who does is very encouraging.
- fmajid 3y ago
  I add them as I find new ones. Note that your site throws the following exception in my locked-down browser where cookies and other persistent storage is disabled unless explicitly allowlisted: failed to read the 'localstorage' property from 'window': access is denied for this document.

anthonyryan1 3y ago

Even worse than this are sites that have RSS feeds and Cloudflare in front. Because my RSS reader doesn't look much different than a bot, and won't complete Cloudflare's CAPTCHA.

djbusby 3y ago
My feed reader is a swlf-hosted in Linode. I get blocked by Captcha too - but Cloudflare loves my home IP. Wireguard to the rescue.
Scion9066 3y ago
I'm wondering if you could use something like FlareSolverr to bypass the Cloudflare CAPTCHAs. I'm a little surprised an RSS feed itself would be rate limited/protected though.
KTibow 3y ago
I was running into something similar when I was accessing the API of someone's MediaWiki instance and adding User-Agent was enough to solve the problem

Fileformat 3y ago

I always like to put a link to the RSS in the actual HTML (i.e. so a human can see it) However, clicking it is horrible UX: a wall of text. Or even worse (shaking fist at Firefox), a download "Save as..." prompt. So... <shameless self promotion> I made Feed.Style[0] to help people make it be a semi-presentable page by adding an XSLT stylesheet.</shame> I have a couple of examples (of HN and high-ranking HNers natch ;) and found a fair number of bugs^H^H^H^H non-optimal choices in their feeds, probably because XML is not all that human-readable, even for devs. Source [1] is MIT-licensed and is completely static, except for the examples, which are just an optional hack running on Cloudflare pages. Feedback welcome! [0] https://www.feed.style/ https://www.feed.style/ [1] https://github.com/fileformat/feed.style https://github.com/fileformat/feed.style

SquareWheel 3y ago
I've seen RSS styling before but it does feel like an oddity. I think I'm so used to the code view that when I see a styled feed page, it makes me wonder if I'm on the real URL. But at least the page does explain itself. As a side note, it seems like a number of your "after" examples do not load. HN hug, or something else?
- Fileformat 3y ago
  Hmm... The examples are running on the free tier of Cloudflare Pages Functions. I should be dramatically under any CPU/networking/transfer limits. And it should scale up as needed. I just tried all of them now, and they did load. What is the exact error you are seeing? Just a blank page or ??? If you mean that the input box for "copy to clipboard" is empty, that's because the feed doesn't have a "self" link, which the stylesheet needs.
  - SquareWheel 3y ago
    I'm not sure then. The first two "after" examples were blank for me. I tried again now and the first loaded, but second did not. After another few refreshes, it did load, though as you said the "copy and paste" link was blank. I tried it in Firefox and got an XML parsing error[1] instead. Again refreshed and it loaded fine. So it seems intermittent at best. [1] Error follows: XML Parsing Error: mismatched tag. Expected: </link>. Location: https://www.feed.style/example.xml?feedurl=https%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombinator.com%2Fshowrss Line Number 6, Column 3:

herbertl 3y ago

I just recently found out that you can add /feed after a Substack publication's URL and subscribe via RSS. (e.g., https://[publication].substack.com/feed https://[publication].substack.com/feed)

microflash 3y ago
You can do something similar with Buttondown: https://buttondown.email/<publisher>/rss https://buttondown.email/<publisher>/rss (for example, https://buttondown.email/j2kun/rss https://buttondown.email/j2kun/rss)

6510 3y ago

You can also have a discoverable OPML with many interesting feeds in it. I'm not aware of any clients that can find it but I think it useful enough for someone to one day implement it. Seeing just one feed appear in your aggregator just for the page you are looking at right now (while very useful later on) isn't as exciting as 10 or 100 new sub worthy subjects.