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I don't disagree that Google is killing the open web. But XSLT is a pretty weak argument for showing that. It is an extremely complicated feature that is very s
by thayne 11mo ago
I don't disagree that Google is killing the open web. But XSLT is a pretty weak argument for showing that. It is an extremely complicated feature that is very seldom used. I am very doubtful dropping support is some evil political decision. It is much more likely they just don't want to sink resources into maintaining something that is almost never used.
For the specific use case of showing RSS and Atom feeds in the browser, it seems like a better solution would be to have built-in support in the browser, rather than relying on the use of XSLT.
- Fileformat 11mo agoOf course built-in support for RSS would be better. But what are the chances of that happening?
- thayne 11mo agoProbably better than browser makers committing to maintaining an xslt library.
- righthand 11mo agoThey didn’t have to maintain it. There was a simpler solution and switch to a library that wasn’t broken.
- homebrewer 11mo agoWe already had it, both Firefox and the old Opera supported viewing (and subscribing to) RSS feeds.
- AlotOfReading 11mo agoThe sites that will be broken are disproportionately important though. Congress.gov/govinfo.gov, weather.gov, europa.gov, plus dozens of sites for libraries, and universities. Looking only at how many sites use a feature gives you an incomplete view. If a feature were only used by Wikipedia, it'd still be inappropriate to deprecate it with a breaking change and a short (1yr) migration window. You work with the important users to retire it and then start pulling the plug publicly to notify everyone you might have missed.
- wpm 11mo agoI’m on mobile so it’s not easy for me to find the source, but Googles own tracking stats showed more sites use XSLT than use WebUSB.