Bring Back RSS Feeds to Browsers

2025-04-178:164112jetgirl.art

I'm currently using Thunderbird to get/read RSS feeds. Outlook used to support them but it seems that's gone now too. I miss when the feeds were avai...

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17 Apr, 2025

I'm currently using Thunderbird to get/read RSS feeds. Outlook used to support them but it seems that's gone now too.

I miss when the feeds were available natively on browsers, setup similarly to bookmarks. You could click the RSS logo on a website and it would add the feed to your list. They showed up in a little folder all categorized and everything. Any links in the feed could be easily clicked on and have the page or whatever open up in a new tab. You didn't need to switch apps or anything.

I'm not a fan of the web based feed readers because they require an account. I have so many accounts. Browser extensions are shady. Cool open source projects on GitHub don't always want to install properly. But I do have at least three web browsers installed, you know, for the purpose of browsing the web.

It just feels like we have a dozen Band-Aids wrapped around a problem that used to be solved.

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Comments

By Grumbledour 2025-04-178:492 reply

This is a good time to remember the short span when Firefox actually would show an RSS Symbol in the address bar after it found a feed on the page, allowing you to click on it to view it and subscribe. I thought, the future of RSS was bright back then. They removed it shortly after.

That they removed even the formatted feed view a few years back was just an insult!

But they could also never manage to cash in on microformats. So much potential there.

By tobz1000 2025-04-178:521 reply

And live bookmarks. This was the healthy way to read news from multiple sources before social media.

By severine 2025-04-179:46

Live bookmarks was how I started, and what I've come back to after all, using this extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/livemarks/

When I'm familiar with the source, the headlines are enough for me to know if I want to read, navigating the folders is super quick, and the feed indicator makes adding new ones very easy too.

By jetgirl 2025-04-1719:29

Nothing was cooler than having a Feedburner bar on your website with a number showing how many subscribers you had.

By DarkWiiPlayer 2025-04-178:232 reply

As a vivaldi user, this reads a bit strangely to me; do other browsers not support RSS anymore? Surely at least firefox does, right?

By Tomte 2025-04-178:24

Not without third-party extensions, no.

By jetgirl 2025-04-1719:28

I have used Vivaldi, but only on a linux laptop that I don't use all the time.

By gmuslera 2025-04-1713:40

The problem of RSS feeds on browsers is keeping track of what you already have read in other devices. It can be done, anyway, if you use the same browser everywhere (i.e. Firefox on mobile, tablets, whatever) and it supports that feature. But it still is something to add to the conditions list.

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