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Firefox Removes Core Product Support For RSS/Atom Feeds (gijsk.com)

Posted by msmash on from the remarkable-moves dept.

Starting with Firefox 64, RSS/Atom feed support will be handled via add-ons, rather than in-product. Mozilla's Gijs Kruitbosch writes: After considering the maintenance, performance and security costs of the feed preview and subscription features in Firefox, we've concluded that it is no longer sustainable to keep feed support in the core of the product. While we still believe in RSS and support the goals of open, interoperable formats on the Web, we strongly believe that the best way to meet the needs of RSS and its users is via WebExtensions.

With that in mind, we have decided to remove the built-in feed preview feature, subscription UI, and the "live bookmarks" support from the core of Firefox, now that improved replacements for those features are available via add-ons.

By virtue of being baked into the core of Firefox, these features have long had outsized maintenance and security costs relative to their usage. Making sure these features are as well-tested, modern and secure as the rest of Firefox would take a surprising amount of engineering work, and unfortunately the usage of these features does not justify such an investment: feed previews and live bookmarks are both used in around 0.01% of sessions.

4 of 131 comments (clear)

  1. Cue the 0.01% of users who "need" RSS by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 2, Informative

    And cue the comments from the other 99.99% of users: I've never used RSS in my life.

    --
    #DeleteFacebook
    1. Re:Cue the 0.01% of users who "need" RSS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      I'm the same but opposite. I use Firefox's Live Bookmarks all the time. Why I would want to use some external program to give me a shitty UI with badly formatted text is beyond me. I click on a live bookmarks, see the title of all the latest updates and if one of them interests me I click it, it opens the page in a new tab. That's how I got to this /. article.

    2. Re:Cue the 0.01% of users who "need" RSS by jensend · · Score: 3, Informative

      You are on point.

      RSS is one of the few innovations in the web since the IE5 days that really empowered users and not ad providers / trackers.

      Firefox claims to be all about enhancing users' power and privacy. They've claimed that Pocket and other things they're doing are there to try to do more to help people discover content they want without going through search engines and social media sites that track them. But RSS is one of the best ways for making that connection and they're killing it.

  2. Try it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    ": I've never used RSS in my life."

    You should try it, seriously.

    Go here:
    http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdotMain

    Click Bookmark in Firefox.
    Select 'Live bookmarks" and decide where you're going to put it on the bookmarks menu.

    Now you have a popup menu that lists the stories on Slashdot. You no longer have to visit Slashdot to see it.
    It's simple, fast, clean, and pretty much the main way I read new website.

    The code is already written and working in Firefox, so Gijs Kruitbosch is talking totally out of his but. None of the NEW CODE will be tested anywhere near as deeply as this EXISTING feature. He's making changes to remove it too. I honestly don't know what the real reason is, but he is talking shit when he's trying to remove a major feature like that.

    I assume there is a fork I can switch to?