I made a site with to get people started: https://www.rss.style/

Example RSS feed: https://www.rss.style/changelog.xml

Cross-site is fine by default, though the script is small enough to easily self-host. If you have a content-security-policy, you'll need to allow the host in script-src.

Normally, clicking on a link to an RSS/Atom feed brings up either a "wall of text" or even worse, a "Save As" dialog, both of which are useless and especially hostile to newcomers. This has lead to authors avoiding putting visible links to their feeds in their HTML pages. So now newcomers never even learn that feeds exist, never mind learn how useful they are!

I (with your help) can do something to get rid of the wall of text: make your feeds display as HTML when you click on them, even though the content is still valid XML!

So take a look at RSS.Style [1] and use the scripts to make your RSS/Atom feeds presentable. You can hotlink the scripts or use them as a starting point for your own feed styling. Code is pretty straightforward and easy to hack.

The other thing that I discovered while working on RSS.Style is that people are not paying enough attention to their feeds. RSS.Style requires that the basic fields are present (and correct) so it can use them in the template: It is shocking how many high-profile bloggers have errors in their feeds. I made a Feed Analyzer[2] that points out some common mistakes that are not covered by the W3C's feed validator. I name and shame some of the top HN contributors[3] on the RSS.Style home page. Even HN's feeds have issues [4] ! (<- @dang take note!)

I originally wrote RSS.Style using XSLT, but Google, as the malevolent friend of the open web, is deprecating XSLT. So I switched to JavaScript, which works everywhere as long as you use a supported Content-Type.

Source is available[5] and everything is MIT licensed. The preview and analyzer are written in TypeScript (no judging! it is just a side project!) and hosted on Cloudflare Pages.

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

[2] https://www.rss.style/feed-analyzer.html

[3] https://www.rss.style/#examples

[4] https://www.rss.style/feed-analyzer.html?feedurl=https%3A%2F...

[5] https://github.com/fileformat/rss.style

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46587349

Points: 6

# Comments: 0

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.

The newer things I'm doing (like UnicodeSearch.org) are static, though I don't like forcing everyone to have JavaScript enabled.

I built the site over 20 years ago, and while it was fun to make, I wouldn't have maintained it this long if is was costing me every month.

I've tried to minimize the intrusiveness: I disabled the pop-up and interstitial ads and I don't serve anything different to people with ad-blockers. And I've stuck with Google Adwords, despite requests from all sorts of questionable alternatives.

I'm not sure about the future: bots are causing all sorts of trouble, and the ad revenue is trending down and is now less than break even.

FileFormat.Info[1] has a page per codepoint. It has been around awhile, so the UI isn't as whizzy, but it has all the data and works w/o JavaScript

UnicodeSearch[2] is an updated search UI that uses JavaScript and the excellent Tabulator grid widget.

There are actually a ton of similar sites with a page-per-codepoint. It is all fun to make one, until the bots come along and hammer every page.

[1] https://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/2248/index.htm

[2] https://www.unicodesearch.org/

But I'm agreeing with you! These features are important to you, an advanced user. The more advanced users for Firefox, the better.

If one of these advanced/niche technologies takes off, suddenly they will have a reason to use Firefox.

One possible way is doing things that Google and Chrome don't (can't).

Catering to niche audiences (and winning those niches) gives people a reason to use it. Maybe one of the niches takes off. Catering to advanced users not necessarily a bad way to compete.

Being a feature-for-feature copy of Chrome is not a winning strategy (IMHO).

If Mozilla wanted Firefox to succeed, they would stop playing "copy Chrome" and support all sorts of things that the community wants, like JpegXL, XSLT, RSS/Atom, Gemini (protocol, not AI), ActivityPub, etc.

Not to mention a built-in ad-blocker...

The XSLT view of the RSS feed so people (especially newcomers) aren't met with a wall of XML text. It should still be a valid XML feed.

Plus it needs to work with static site generators.

What about people who don't "1) Know what RSS is"???

And what if you could make it friendly for them in 4 minutes? You could by dropping in a XSLT file and adding a single line to the XML file. I bet you could do it in 3 minutes.

Think about it from a non-technical user's perspective: they click on a RSS link and get a wall of XML text. What are they going to do? Back button and move on. How are they ever going to get introduced to RSS and feed readers and such like?

I think a lot of feeds never get hit by a browser because there isn't a hyperlink to them. For example: HN has feeds, but no link in the HTML body, so I'm pretty confident they don't get browser hits. And no one who doesn't already know about feeds will ever use them.

I made a website to promote doing using XSLT for RSS/Atom feeds. Look at the before/after screenshots: which one will scare off a non-techie user?

https://www.rss.style/

If browser vendors had made it easy for mainstream users, would there have been as much "market demand"?

Between killing off Google Reader and failing to support RSS/Atom, Google handed social media to Facebook et al.

1. This is pretty difficult for someone who doesn't know about RSS. How would they ever learn what to do with it?

2. Browsers don't do that. There used to be an icon in the URL bar when they detected an RSS feed. It would be wonderful if browsers did support doing exactly what you suggest. I'm not holding my breath.

I'm not looking to replicate my blog via XSLT of the RSS feed: that's what the blog's HTML pages are. I just don't want to alienate non-RSS users.

To be extra clear: I want to have My RSS Feed link on my blog so everyone can find my feed. I also want users who don't know about RSS to see something other than a wall of plain-text XML.