Avatar for Username

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

This thread was archived. Please ask a new question if you need help.

Why was RSS support removed from Firefox?

  • 4 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 1 view
  • Last reply by cor-el

Oli Warner
Oli Warner
more options

Up until Firefox 64, Firefox had limited support for RSS:

  • Viewing a RSS feed would show you the feed items, with an option to do something with the feed.
  • Live bookmarks would actually subscribe to those feeds

I can understand removing Live Bookmarks. It's a big feature. I don't understand removing the (what I assume to be) XSLT stylesheet that made RSS feeds not look like a wall of XML. Does anybody know what the conversation was here? Are there minutes?

Even basic RSS support helps people interact with the web, and since Chrome and Firefox both dumped RSS, users are being driven further and further into the arms of "Platforms" who handle this stuff through black-box algorithms. And so much tracking.

Mozilla should reverse this one. Bring RSS back hard.

Up until Firefox 64, Firefox had limited support for RSS: * Viewing a RSS feed would show you the feed items, with an option to ''do something'' with the feed. * Live bookmarks would actually subscribe to those feeds I can understand removing Live Bookmarks. It's a big feature. I don't understand removing the (what I assume to be) XSLT stylesheet that made RSS feeds not look like a wall of XML. Does anybody know what the conversation was here? Are there minutes? Even basic RSS support helps people interact with the web, and since Chrome and Firefox both dumped RSS, users are being driven further and further into the arms of "Platforms" who handle this stuff through black-box algorithms. And so much tracking. Mozilla should reverse this one. Bring RSS back hard.

All Replies (4)

Oli Warner
Oli Warner Question owner
more options

Found this:

https://www.gijsk.com/blog/2018/10/firefox-removes-core-product-support-for-rss-atom-feeds/

While this gives some insight into the perceived engineering problems, it's really surprising that a little XSLT wasn't considered viable. The rationale that people will use extensions is so malformed. How do people even know they need to get an extension if Firefox isn't telling them?

cor-el
cor-el
  • Moderator
  • Top 10 Contributor
more options

See also:

Pati
Pati
more options

I use 60.9.0esr and prevent updates. Then I can use Rss.

I also downloaded that to a laptop and also got into settings to prevent updates. But it always "updates" there to something like 68.12 which does not have rss.

What is the latest oldest version of Firefox which has rss ?

cor-el
cor-el
  • Moderator
  • Top 10 Contributor
more options

There are extensions that support RSS in Firefox.