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> if put a podcast URL into my Webbrowser I just get a bunch of raw XML And if I put a web URL into my telnet client I just get a bunch of raw HTTP! Not everyt

> if put a podcast URL into my Webbrowser I just get a bunch of raw XML And if I put a web URL into my telnet client I just get a bunch of raw HTTP! Not everything on the internet is part of the web. There have always been other protocols: IMAP/SMTP for email, IRC for chat, NNTP for newsgroups, XMPP for instant messaging, and RSS for subscriptions. The idea that everything has to be done over the web is what’s really undermined “the idea of HTML as a markup language”. If HTML is a markup language, why would you use it for all these other use cases, most of which were handled with much better performance on hardware from twenty years ago?

max51 3y ago
The difference is that every computer comes with a app where you can copy-paste that URL and see the full website. With RSS, you first need to find and install a 3rd party software to view it and/or create an account on a website.
- vel0city 3y ago
  This was one feature I really liked about the old Opera. I seem to recall being able to look at an RSS feed and it applied a basic style to it from the get-go, as it had baked-in RSS support.
- philwelch 3y ago
  That’s mostly because tech companies have been trying to kill open protocols like RSS in order to lock people into their proprietary platforms.
  - piperswe 3y ago
    That doesn't answer why Firefox doesn't have RSS support anymore though (removed in 2018)
    - philwelch 3y ago
      I don’t think Firefox continuing to support RSS would have made a difference. It makes sense for Mozilla to prioritize features that users actually want over trying to maintain some idealistic vision that was already dead.
troupe 3y ago
Not disagreeing entirely, but don't forget that you used to be able to type ftp://example.com and gopher://example.com into the url to access sites. I think there were others as well. Most browsers have removed those protocols.
- randomdata 3y ago
  As you point out, ftp and gopher were, at one point in time, also used to transfer websites, so the inclusion was supportive of the web directive. But have browsers ever widely attempted to be anything other than web browsers? A couple of vendors tried including RSS support at one point, but I don't recall it catching on across the industry. Media (images, audio, video) browsers, maybe. Technically that is not HTML, but still rendered by most browsers. However, as that content can also be embedded in HTML, requiring browser support to be present anyway, it is a bit grey area.
  - philwelch 3y ago
    Late versions of Netscape and early versions of Mozilla included email clients. Mozilla later split the email client and web browser into two separate programs, Thunderbird and Firebird. Firebird became Firefox.
    - randomdata 3y ago
      And Usenet! That never caught on either, though. We've had more web browsers with RSS support than web browsers with email support.
    - cruffle_duffle 3y ago
      Didn’t they also include calendaring at some point? Didn’t JZW once famously say all software grows until it eventually has an email client?
      - ascagnel_ 3y ago
        You're thinking of Mozilla Sunbird. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Sunbird https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Sunbird

max51 3y ago

The difference is that every computer comes with a app where you can copy-paste that URL and see the full website. With RSS, you first need to find and install a 3rd party software to view it and/or create an account on a website.

vel0city 3y ago
This was one feature I really liked about the old Opera. I seem to recall being able to look at an RSS feed and it applied a basic style to it from the get-go, as it had baked-in RSS support.
philwelch 3y ago
That’s mostly because tech companies have been trying to kill open protocols like RSS in order to lock people into their proprietary platforms.
- piperswe 3y ago
  That doesn't answer why Firefox doesn't have RSS support anymore though (removed in 2018)
  - philwelch 3y ago
    I don’t think Firefox continuing to support RSS would have made a difference. It makes sense for Mozilla to prioritize features that users actually want over trying to maintain some idealistic vision that was already dead.

troupe 3y ago

Not disagreeing entirely, but don't forget that you used to be able to type ftp://example.com and gopher://example.com into the url to access sites. I think there were others as well. Most browsers have removed those protocols.

randomdata 3y ago
As you point out, ftp and gopher were, at one point in time, also used to transfer websites, so the inclusion was supportive of the web directive. But have browsers ever widely attempted to be anything other than web browsers? A couple of vendors tried including RSS support at one point, but I don't recall it catching on across the industry. Media (images, audio, video) browsers, maybe. Technically that is not HTML, but still rendered by most browsers. However, as that content can also be embedded in HTML, requiring browser support to be present anyway, it is a bit grey area.
- philwelch 3y ago
  Late versions of Netscape and early versions of Mozilla included email clients. Mozilla later split the email client and web browser into two separate programs, Thunderbird and Firebird. Firebird became Firefox.
  - randomdata 3y ago
    And Usenet! That never caught on either, though. We've had more web browsers with RSS support than web browsers with email support.
  - cruffle_duffle 3y ago
    Didn’t they also include calendaring at some point? Didn’t JZW once famously say all software grows until it eventually has an email client?
    - ascagnel_ 3y ago
      You're thinking of Mozilla Sunbird. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Sunbird https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Sunbird