RSS Feed Best Practices (2022) | Hacker News Reader

RSS Feed Best Practices (2022)

kevincox.ca

62 pointsKomoD10 comments

As the author of an RSS reader, I would agree with most of that article, except the HTML / Styling section. It is full of misleading information.

1. You can use CSS, but expect that most readers will completely ignore it. Even widespread ones, like Feedly. Those that do support it will only offer a small subset, like text styles. No layout styles (positioning or flex-layouts), often not even colors. If you want to try the capabilities of your reader, this is a test feed: https://test-rss.downread.com/styles.rss.xml

2. Don't just prefer inline CSS, use it, because any sane RSS reader will filter <style>.

3. Yes, semantic elements will generally work. And not only those listed: also things like <table>, <figure>, and sometimes <aside>.

4. Agree about JavaScript. Don't use it.

5. Decent readers will support <video> and <audio>. But <iframes> are even better, as long as you use common providers, especially YouTube. Embeds from X, Instagram, and Facebook are also relatively widely supported.

6. Agree about forms. At best, they will be used as rendering hints, but forms won't work.

I’d be interested to hear a bit about your reader.

I keep coming back to RSS, but that sadly also means I keep forgetting about it. How do you build the habit and routine?

Well, it's downread.com, still in beta, but very usable and nearly feature-complete. Not sure what else to say. I strive to make it better than the competition :) HTML/Styles is one aspect. I am not aware of any other RSS reader that supports styles in articles as well. Downread even supports CSS, CMS-specific CSS classes, Tailwind, and custom styling for difficult, popular feeds.

Regarding the habit... I don't know, doing it forever. Whenever I have a moment to read, I open it. Before Downread, it was Feedly, and before Feedly, Google Reader, and before Google Reader, I don't know, some desktop app. It's pretty much the only way I read, and I read a lot.

I didn't know I could insert iframes, but now I see that I can I'll update my RSS feeds with this, thanks!

Typically only with whitelisted URLs/hosts.

1. Have a RSS feed 2. Don't get rid of it

Sadly Twitter, reddit and many other sites have violated these for years.

Unfortunately, most standalone RSS readers do not allow you to use a translator to switch to another language. For multilingual sites where the feed contains content in various languages, the only option is to use browser-based RSS readers; only there can you get a translation.

I would add to this that tag URIs (see RFC 4151) are a fantastic way to mint entry IDs.

Fun fact: even though "There is no authoritative resolution mechanism for tags" and they're "not designed to support resolution", you're totally allowed to resolve them anyway. You can, for example, bodge your server to do it at the HTTP level:

    GET tag:alice@example.net,2013:15fb-4628-94d3 HTTP/1.0

    HTTP/1.0 302 I love you
    Location: https://example.net/~alice/2025/11/03/go-vote

(You can even respond to requests to resolve other people's tag URIs that you didn't mint. No one is going to stop you.)

Yes, use Atom 1.0 <3

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