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Comment by neilv | Hacker News Reader

Now that browser developers did their best to kill RSS/Atom...

Does a Web site practically need to do anything to advertise their feed to the diehard RSS/Atom users, other than use the `link` element?

Is there a worthwhile convention for advertising RSS/Atom visually in the page, too?

(On one site, I tried adding an "RSS" icon, linking to the Atom feed XML, alongside all the usual awful social media site icons. But then I removed it, because I was afraid it would confuse visitors who weren't very Web savvy, and maybe get their browser displaying XML or showing them an error message about the MIME content type.)

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I use RSS Style[1] to make the RSS and Atom feeds for my blog human readable. It styles the xml feeds and inserts a message at the top about the feed being meant for news readers, not people. Thus technically making it "safe" for less tech savvy people.

[1]: https://www.rss.style/

What about Google killing XSLT? https://developer.chrome.com/docs/web-platform/deprecating-x...

Browsers really should have embraced XSLT rather that abandoned it. Now we're stuck trying yet again to reinvent solutions already handled by REST [1].

[1] https://tonysull.co/articles/mcp-is-the-wrong-answer/

XSLT is the solution domain specialists and philosophers. Abandoning it is the vote of the market and market interests, the wisdom of crowds at work. This is the era of scale not expertise, enjoy the fruits.

Its more the market makers that made the vote rather than the market itself.

Effectively no one was using XSLT at any point (certain document pipelines or Paul Ford like indie hackers being the exceptions that proved the rule). Browsers keep all kinds of legacy features, of course, and they could well have kept this one, and doing so would’ve been a decision with merit. But they didn’t, and the market will ratify their decision. Just like effectively no one was using XSLT, effectively no one will change their choice of browser over its absence.

Blizzard used to use it for their entire WoW Armory website to look people up, They converted off it years ago, but for awhile they used XML/XSLT to display the entire page

Its hard to judge usage when browsers stopped maintaining XSLT with the 1.0 spec. V1.0 was very lacking in features and is difficult to use.

Browsers also never added support for some of the most fundamental features to support XSLT. Page transitions and loading state are particularly rough in XSLT in my experience.

RSS.style is my site. I'm currently testing a JavaScript-based workaround that should look just like the current XSLT version. It will not require the XSLT polyfill (which sort-of works, but seems fragile).

One bonus is that it will be easier to customize for people that know JavaScript but don't know XSLT (which is a lot of people, including me).

You'll still need to add a line to the feed source code.

> message at the top about the feed being meant for news readers

There's no real reason to take this position. A styled XML document is just another page.

For example, if you're using a static site generator where the front page of your /blog.html shows the most recent N posts, and the /blog/feed.xml shows the most recent N posts, then...?

A reason to add that explanation to a styled RSS feed is to teach visitors what newsreaders are.

A message explaining what feeds and feedreaders are would suffice for that.

Shout out to Vivaldi, which renders RSS feeds with a nice default "card per post" style. Not to mention that it also has a feed reader built in as well.

Isn't ironic that browsers do like 10,000 things nowadays, but Vivaldi (successor to Opera) is the only one that does the handful of things users actually want?

I don't use it myself because my computer is too slow (I think they built it in node.js or something). But it makes me happy that someone is carrying the torch forward...

I removed all the bullshit social media icons and made sure that the rss icon is the first thing you notice on the landing page[1].

[1]: https://rednafi.com

For a personal site, I'd probably just do that. (My friends are generally savvy and principled enough not to do most social media, so no need for me to endorse it by syndicating there.)

But for a commercial marketing site that must be on the awful social media, I'm wondering about quietly supporting RSS/Atom without compromising the experience for the masses.

Fair. For commercial sites and pretty much anything you want more eyeballs on, you need to put them on the social media.

With the lack of styling, I'm sorry to say I didn't notice the RSS icon at first at all. Adding the typical orange background to the icon would fix that.

Fair criticism. I'm trying to find a way to present that without being obnoxious.

Maybe a rounded border? I agree it's too subtle as is.

Also, your Segal's Law link seems to have an encoding issue with the apostrophe.

Yeah rounded border seems like a good idea.

Also, weird, seems like I don't see the encoding issue on the segal's law.

I think you did just fine. The orange can be very obnoxious indeed, and just the icon is more than enough for people actually looking for it.

PS: I found out I was already subscribed to your feed.

Thanks for the sub :)

Yeah, the idea was that since RSS is still considered niche by the broader audience, those who are looking for it will probably find it just fine.

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