> Supported by Mozilla Firefox 2.0, Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0 and other browsers
Unfortunately not supported by Mozilla Firefox 114 or Microsoft Edge.
It is still a very useful standard. I use https://github.com/Reeywhaar/want-my-rss to add the icon to my browser. Plus even without browser support this allows you to just paste an article into your Feed Reader and most will use autodiscovery to find the feed for you. However without a browser icon you need to guess and check.
Mozilla removing long standing support for this from Firefox was a clear signal what their browser is for now and what it isn't for. Firefox is for running javascript applications and consuming DRM video and visiting your bank's website, just like chrome. It is not a browser for surfing the web and looking at websites.
Most modern RSS feed-readers still use this `rel=alternate` link to allow users to just paste the URL of the site they want to subscribe to instead of forcing the users to look for and find the RSS link somewhere on the page. It's (surprisingly) very broadly implemented among sites and blogs that publish RSS.
I'm a big fan of FreshRSS (self-hosted) and if I need more powerful feature (such as filtering, dedup, webhooks) I use Inoreader, I have been using at least one rss reader since 2003 and there is no way silo's such as Twitter or others can do better than carefully curating ones own information feed.
I suspect that Mozilla got pushed by Google to remove the built-in RSS support surrounding Google+ release.
See, decentralized content delivery such as RSS was not friendly enough to ads, so RSS had to be removed for better profits.
Needless to say that it was a nail in the coffin of internet information quality.
Yes, oh yes, please bring this back.
Firefox used to have this, I used it a lot. Am I that old?
Unfortunately live bookmarks have also gone away in Firefox, luckily I found an add-on for that.
I still follow many RSS feeds (about 250). Sometimes it's hard to find the feed on a site, because the feeds aren't always advertised and their URLs can be tricky. Based on the URLs I've seen, I created a simple script to check if a site has a feed:
Related to this topic, I made a website/api that finds feeds for you:
https://discovery.thirdplace.no/?q=vimeo.com/user4464579
It's pretty rudimentary but alleviates some manual work.
RSS is still only sane way to subscribe to youtube channel, or rather only way that YT managed to not break over the years
Why Chrome to this date does not support RSS while all browsers that came before chrome had native support to at least read RSS xml files. Try opening any RSS xml feed in chrome, it will appear as plain XML.
I hold chrome responsible for decline of RSS.
I got back on the RSS Train by replacing my third party reddit client with NetNewsWire [1]. I've been enjoying it, and syncs across all my Apple stuff.
Keen to explore RSS again - specifically I'm wondering whether I can somehow integrate Mozilla's readability code into the flow - extract & clean articles as full feeds.
The '00s were such a wonderful time, the explosion in open access information, mashups (how I miss mashups!), easy publishing and the reach you could get from your sofa. RSS is the epitome of that, it's such a shame we have ended up with these walled garden social publishing platforms that lock our content down.
This, adding the RSS icon to the address bar, was an inspired move to surface discoverability. Compare that with the fight to get Apple to surface the availability of PWAs!
The big thing that has changed since that time is the monetisation, these walled platforms have had to instigate revenue share with large creators. But still, the wish for a simpler more open web is in the background. There is evidence of a swing back that way (the fediverse, blue sky?), I just hope "big business" doesn't destroy it (the rumour of Facebook embracing the fediverse...).
RSS isn't dead, it's the backbone of podcasts, but it's such a shame our Twitter feed, our Facebook, or even our Twitch isn't available as RSS.
Back in '06, my "mashup" was a social feed aggregator, it gave you a single "homepage" with all your activity from Myspace, Facebook, Reddit, Digg, Flickr, and many other sites. A lot of that was built on RSS, and you could add any RSS fead to your page. Sadly it went nowhere, but I learnt a lot...