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Mozilla to Remove Support for Built-In Feed Reader From Firefox (bleepingcomputer.com)

Posted by msmash on from the up-next dept.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Mozilla engineers are preparing to remove one of the Firefox browser's oldest features -- its built-in support for RSS and Atom feeds, and inherently, the "Live Bookmarks" feature. All Firefox users are probably well accustomed to this feature, albeit not many have ever used it. This feature powers the browser's ability to detect when users are accessing an RSS/Atom feed and then show a special page that lets them subscribe to the feed with a custom feed reader or the browser's built-in "Live Bookmarks" feature. [...] In a recent discussion on the company's bug tracker, Mozilla engineers said they plan to remove feed support sometime later this year, with the release of Firefox 63 or Firefox 64 --scheduled for October and December, respectively.

9 of 161 comments (clear)

  1. Why do I use Firefox Again? by nucrash · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The Management of my feeds has been a primary reason that I have used Firefox over other browsers since.....

    I am deeply disappointed in the loss of this feature. I am not ready to shift to Chrome and I don't want to shift to Chrome. Yet moves like this are deeply frustrating.

    Is this a feature that others don't use? Am I unique? What's going on?

    --
    Place something witty here
    1. Re: Why do I use Firefox Again? by quintus_horatius · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You're not alone. I use Live Bookmarks daily.

      Like others are saying, I hope it remains available through a plug in because it will be sorely missed. If not, it's departure won't be enough to make me switch to another browser as my daily driver, but it will impact my experience negatively.

  2. well, sure by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Feeds are too user-centric. You might not have all your reading choices aggregated and tracked by a central authority!

    1. Re:well, sure by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Also, if you are allowed to use feeds, you might get updates on things in mere chronological order or something crazy like that.

  3. Mozilla Can't Win by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    When Mozilla adds new features to Firefox because that's what keeps people upgrading and using the product, they are blamed for adding bloat and slowing the product down. When Mozilla removes little used features, suddenly they are doing away with a vital function and the one reason a person had for continuing to use Firefox.

  4. Um, why are they doing this? by mad+zambian · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The RSS reader is something I use regularly, and have something like 30 feeds subscribed to including the one here on Slashdot. It is way easier (much faster) to skim through the RSS feeds for headlines, rather than going to the website itself. But pageviews etc, is what count these days I guess. Screw the user's time and any data caps.

    Mozilla gets a downvote for this one.

    --
    Trying to associate Microsoft with "fun" is like trying to associate Satan with aromatherapy. -Tycho
    1. Re:Um, why are they doing this? by scrimmer · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It is way easier (much faster) to skim through the RSS feeds for headlines, rather than going to the website itself.

      This captures it perfectly.

      I've 63 subscribed feeds, about 55 of which I review daily. Skimming for relevant headlines and then opening those pages in new tabs has become a central part of how I, and others I've introduced the feature to over the years, find and read articles on the web. I've curated a wide range of sources through LiveBookmarks and RSS, and this Firefox feature has been the most efficient way for me to find items of interest. I might also add that I'm using, by today's bleeding-edge standards, antiquated hardware, as I'm sure not an insignificant number of users do, and the RSS feature helps to facilitate web browsing.

      (And, I saw the headline for this story through my RSS feed for Slashdot.)

  5. Seems reasonable to me by urusan · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I use Firefox and I didn't realize this was a feature. The engineers seem to have thought it through, and it makes sense to remove this kind of largely unused legacy code, since it costs time and money to test and maintain. I mean, the last updates were 7 years ago. They're also giving a migration path for the users and there are reasonable alternatives, so it's not like they're just leaving people out in the cold.

    Most importantly, it's really a feature that makes more sense as an extension than as a built-in part of the browser. As an add-on it can evolve separately from the browser, and multiple extensions can compete with each other (and fill in different niches) without having to go through the trouble of developing a full web-browser.

  6. Nice move by Tsolias · · Score: 3, Insightful

    They've been shitting on firefox's code since the version 27.0.
    They destroyed the add-ons community,
    they destroyed the interface,
    they have zero mobile presence,
    they lost a shitload of market-share,
    they started taking political positions,
    and what did they learn about this?
    remove moar features.

    do you remember https://www.reddit.com/r/firef... ?