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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.

24 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: 2, Interesting

      I need RSS and use Firefox, but I have no problem with this. Live Bookmarks have been broken for me for years, and were terribly slow even before that. I have been using an extension, Brief, for that time which works well enough. If this makes it even marginally easier for Mozilla to maintain and secure Firefox, then it can only be a good thing.

    2. Re:Cue the 0.01% of users who "need" RSS by meist3r · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Honest question from one of the 0.01%: How do you people parse news across the web? Does everybody only read aggregators? Do you visit all of your sources websites individually? How is that not driving people insane? I just don't understand.

    3. Re:Cue the 0.01% of users who "need" RSS by hey! · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I think you're looking at the wrong end of the stick.

      RSS is useful to any user who wants to monitor many different information sources, but profit for an Internet content provider comes from goosing your engagement metrics.

      RSS belongs to an obsolete and idealistic view of the Internet as an instrument for empowering users. The money to be made on the Internet comes from capturing users then analyzing and shaping their opinions and behavior. That's why "smart speakers" are a thing, but content syndication is not.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    4. Re:Cue the 0.01% of users who "need" RSS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I also use RSS all the time (that's how I arrived at this article). While I technically don't need to use RSS in my browser, I do need a RSS application that is capable of causing web pages to be fully rendered. Whether it's viewing the rest of the article (via an http link), viewing a video, commenting on a post (like this one); access to all of the functions of a complete web browser is mandatory for how I use RSS. Compared to all the things that a modern web renderer is required to do, it seems much easier to me to integrate my RSS viewer fairly tightly to a web browser. I admit that I don't (AFAIK) use the feature being removed as I use a 3rd party extension in Firefox. As long as Firefox continues to allow the kind of integration between RSS viewing and full web browsing via extensions that they do currently, this is change is irrelevant to me. If it makes overall development of Firefox better, it even sounds like a good thing. Suggesting that RSS and web browsers shouldn't be integrated, sounds like crazy talk to me.

    5. Re: Cue the 0.01% of users who "need" RSS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You've got it 100%.
      The progressive kill-off of RSS support from news sites and such was pure profit-driven.
      They'd rather you see ads, and use scripts to monitor your site usage. (because for some reason, people apparently hovering words randomly matters)

    6. 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.

    7. Re:Cue the 0.01% of users who "need" RSS by hey! · · Score: 3, Insightful

      And yet, people are becoming so accustomed to being treated like sheep, they can't see the point of something that would give them control of their own attention span.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    8. Re:Cue the 0.01% of users who "need" RSS by Xylantiel · · Score: 2

      Yep, Internet usage is starting to look more and more like mind control. People are starting to be controlled by their "feed".

    9. Re:Cue the 0.01% of users who "need" RSS by phantomfive · · Score: 2

      Different people get their news in different ways

      I used to use Google News, but eventually I realized most news is superfluous. Ignoring 98% of the Kavanaugh news was the second-best decision I made this month.

      I'll bet most people now get their news from Facebook, though.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    10. Re:Cue the 0.01% of users who "need" RSS by LoneBoco · · Score: 2

      https://addons.mozilla.org/en-...

      Livemarks is the closest thing you will get. It also has some issues and it completely destroys your bookmark history. Yay.

    11. 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.

    12. Re:Cue the 0.01% of users who "need" RSS by Darinbob · · Score: 2

      That's how I use RSS. I have only ever used RSS with firefox, starting from when it had sample "BBC" news article drop-down button, and I later added Slashdot to this. I don't know or care if it's the right way to do this, but it's extremely convenient to get a list of headlines without going to a web page first.

      I just hope that an add-on shows up soon before I learn to live without knowing what's happening in the world.

    13. Re:Cue the 0.01% of users who "need" RSS by Darinbob · · Score: 2

      Those are growser plugins, or do you get your headlines somewhere else and then use the links to go to a browser?

      Ie, right now with RSS I can click the "slashdot" button that is on the bookmark bar, and then there's a drop down list of maybe 20 headlines, and within seconds I can open a new tab for the ones I care about. For BBC I get maybe 60 headlines in the drop down. It's a great feature, and I have never seen anything else similar.

  2. whoa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So I get pocket top sites, autocompletes in my address bar to shit like hilton.com, plus other sponsored nonsense. Yet RSS feeds are too difficult to maintain?

    1. Re:whoa by danomac · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I hope Pocket is next on the chopping block, it has no reason to be in the main build of Firefox.

  3. Good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Anything ancillary to web browsing should be add-ons, including Pocket, whatever that is.

  4. 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?

    1. Re:Try it by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 2

      I assume there is a fork I can switch to?

      Pale Moon? Haven't tried RSS yet in that one. Try it and see.

      Just tried it in Pale Moon, works in current version :)

  5. RSS lacks a value proposition for me by sjbe · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Honest question from one of the 0.01%: How do you people parse news across the web?

    I go to a handful of sites which provide most of the information I'm looking for. Some are general news sites, others are more topical or special interest. I also follow a fair number of webcomics.

    Does everybody only read aggregators?

    No but they are a source I use. RSS I really find constraining to be honest and for the more specific interests of mine I find it essentially useless.

    Do you visit all of your sources websites individually? How is that not driving people insane? I just don't understand.

    It's a handful of sites so it's genuinely not a big deal. Plus RSS isn't really making things easier for me and I find the RSS readers to be more than a little clumsy for my workflow. It doesn't organize it better or provide me more information or even reduce the number of things I click on. Plus it isn't supported by some key sources I follow. If it works for you then you be you but I don't really see much of a value proposition in it for me personally.

  6. Not a "need" by sjbe · · Score: 3, Insightful

    And chances are you've never used a braille terminal in your whole life. Doesn't mean someone else doesn't desperately need it.

    Nobody "desperately needs" RSS feeds in core Firefox. There are plenty of RSS readers available for those who need one and it will still be available via extensions which is probably where it always should have been.

  7. Finally by Chas · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Getting back to being a WEB BROWSER, rather than a shitty swiss-army-knife of pointless non-browser-related "features".

    --


    Chas - The one, the only.
    THANK GOD!!!
    1. Re:Finally by caseih · · Score: 3

      Previewing RSS feeds of web-related items is not browser related? Previewing an RSS feed is something I do on nearly a daily basis with Firefox. I do this so I can more efficiently browse some forums I participate in (in a browser).

      RSS parsing simple thing and I don't understand why they feel it's such a burden, or why you feel this would be bloat. Parsing markup is what a browser does.

      Mozilla is a strange organization. They are well funded now, but somehow can't find enough money to cover basic features?

      At least, hopefully, there'll still be a plugin for viewing RSS feeds. After all what good is an RSS feed if you can't view it? And no I don't want to use a standalone RSS reader for handling RSS feeds that point back to web pages!

  8. Next step: deprecate API(s) by ccr · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The pessimist in me thinks that if anything is to be learned of past history of Firefox development, the next step after removing a feature from core and into extensions is to deprecate / remove the API(s) this extension relies on to function. Or at least the APIs that enable it to work in a comfortable manner vs. UI experience.

    Personally I use RSS feeds of 7 different blogs (wow, blogs still exist?) in order to easily follow when new posts are made. It's not much, but at least I don't have to manually check them out, quick browse through live bookmark menu is enough.