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Comment by sattoshi | Hacker News Reader

I will go against the grain here and say that this is good. RSS is not a core function of a web browser and as such should be handled by an extension, if at all.

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I think browsers should render any content type in a way that provides functionality for a user; for example, I think it would be great if when loading a JSON file, I could toggle between the raw data provided and a pretty-printed, syntax-highlighted, collapsable tree view of the JSON file. I think it would be great if when loading an MD file, I could toggle between the raw markdown and a rendered version. Certainly when I load an image or audio file outside a webpage, my browser decodes renders the content usefully.

Given these cases, why would XML files be any different?

JSON parser is indeed a very nice feature of Firefox I wish Chrome could come up with something similar.

There's a ton of extensions that do exactly that.

And I don't need the hassle to figure out who stands behind them and if I can trust them. Most of the time there isn't any good reason to trust them anyway.

Oh thanks! I don't even know that's possible with extensions. Just installed one, works like a charm :D

yes to all this, but then when do you stop? how many file types should be supported by a browser? i'm sure some people would like it that the browser could edit spreadsheets too. there are so many different use cases.

Agreed. At a certain point you find that you've made more than a browser, you've made a full OS

If you have a security model and a virtual machine, you already have, haven't you? Browsers are in a meaningful way already operating systems. (This is not an original thought).

You are right, why stop at XML?! We should totally stop displaying JSON in browsers also!

I would start with the guiding principle that read-only decoding is more important than annotation or editing; non-patent encumbered formats should be the first priority (and in Firefox, perhaps the only formats supported); and formats that exist and are in use currently are more important than historical document formats. I don't think this is egregiously bad mission creep for a browser.

I agree. JPEGs, PNGs and other image formats aren't core to what a web browser is supposed to do (and certainly not scripts), and certainly weren't in the original ones. Let's get rid of that cruft!

>i'm sure some people would like it that the browser could edit spreadsheets too. there are so many different use cases.

Why not?

Why shouldn't browsers display at least the most common image, document and media types (including spreadsheets?) Why only display a few content-types but download all others? Content is the point of the web, after all.

Yeah, I usually preview a feed in Firefox before adding it to a proper RSS reader.

It's also been great for one-off grabbing of a resource from an RSS feed when you don't want to subscribe -- nor use the embedded players sites have been increasingly pointing users towards on their web pages.

I disagree. Viewing a pretty printed JSON file is not something 98% of web browser users want to do, building in functionality for it just adds complexity. Pretty-printing JSON is much better handled by an extension, as is the case in Chrome.

By that logic no browser should include the developer tools either.

If the extension APIs allowed it I'd agree with that, but developer tools need much deeper access than extensions provide.

Right, but a web browser wants all sites to look good on them (which IS their main purpose), and including developer tools integrated into the product really helps web site developers make that happen.

RSS isn't used by people to make the main product of a browser better.

Firefox (at least the Developer Edition) renders JSON like that (no syntax highlighting though).

I wouldn't mind if firefox rendered text/markdown.

I only disagree with this for one reason: many websites have RSS feeds, but don't link to them in an obvious place. Clicking "Subscribe to This Page…" in the Bookmarks menu and get the feed URL is something I do quite a lot. Also good for accessibility, RSS feeds are usually less cluttered than web pages.

I build websites for a living, and providing an RSS feed for my clients (from their perspective) is incredibly low priority.

Why? Because their clients don't ask for them. RSS feeds are used for social media content sharing, but not for regular users.

Also, most blog content these days (for my clients) tends to be pretty canned stuff only used for SEO and content-bling to make some site look important.

I think sites that are serious about followers may use RSS, but not the majority of sites out there. Which leads us to why RSS support isn't needed anymore and can be relegated to an extension... popularity.

> from their perspective) is incredibly low priority.

Perspective has nothing to do with it, implementing RSS/Atom is incredibly simple for most use cases when you build websites for a living...

Yes it does, because they pay the bills.

Also, all of the sites I build have RSS built into them automatically because of the framework running them.

It's just that no one cares. RSS has never been requested by an end client (owner of the site) in any site I have built in almost 20 years.

But, when the social media and marketing people get involved, they used RSS as a way to share content with other 3rd party services.

RSS reader in Firefox as an extension is a perfect solution.

The core function of a web browser shouldn't be to pretty print JSON either, yet they recently added that feature in core.

I understand getting rid of XUL legacy cruft, but removing the RSS renderer/reader entirely with no plan other than "extensions will fix it" just leaves a bad taste.

All browsers have been pretty-printing XML for a while. Adding JSON was long overdue.

It might not be a core functionality of a browser, but all major browser vendors now accept that browsers are also development tools.

One of the core features of web browsers is web development tools. Pretty printing JSON is a extremely useful and versatile web development tool, and as such I consider it in scope.

The core feature of a browser is browsing. Web dev tools are secondary. To a regular user who is not dev the removal of RSS is a loss. JSON is secondary. Firefox would make a mistake if they prioritized Dev tools over end user features.

How many regular users actually use RSS? To be honest, I don't think most devs use RSS, much less non-devs.

Mozilla has a finite budget to allocate to features. Maybe they looked at usage rates and decided that RSS just wasn't an important feature, or other features were more important.

How many regular users use JSON or other development tools?

Very few, but I bet there's an order of magnitude more developers who regularly view JSON in a browser than RSS in a browser (without extensions).

There is a separate "Firefox Developer Edition" for that.

I'm strongly in favor of anything that makes it easier for non developers to "see behind the scenes" into computers, so while developer edition is nice and all I don't consider it a strong reason not to include development tools in regular firefox.

Believe it or not JSON is not the only data transfer format used on the web. Some web services even spit out XML, crazy I know.

Given Pocket's inclusion in Firefox, it seems that Mozilla does indeed consider a "news feed" to be a "core function" of their browser.

And given Looking Glass's required install, it seems they consider "marketing TV shows" and "cryptic messages that look like security compromises" to be a core function too.

In principle that would be correct if Firefox was a lean browser. But it includes hundreds of integrated components/services no one asked for, most far less useful and less popular than RSS.

Now if they're remove Pocket....

Indeed if you want to access RSS through your web browser it makes sense to do so through a hosted service similar to how google groups does for usenet

Agreed. Remove the bloat.

I don't disagree in principle, but Firefox also breaks extensions indiscriminately so the platform is starting to get defined more by the functionality it's lost than gained.

"indiscriminately"

uh huh

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