It was good that it was removed, as it was useless to put it mildly
You're describing the "live bookmarks" feature, which was only one part of the RSS functionality that was removed from Firefox. I never used live bookmarks, but I used the feed discovery and subscription functionality all the time -- only some of which can now be restored with addons.
In the past it was even possible to subscribe with whatever addon you prefered from the firefox RSS preview directly, but that was already lost after the jump to WebExtensions.
So what's your point?
[1] - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/awesome-rss/
[2] - https://newsboat.org/
Another great new extension is Want My RSS because it's compatible with 10 RSS readers for direct subscribtion (you can add your own when you have a self-hosted reader for example). Feed detection and feed display is also great! https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/want-my-rss/
I use Thunderbird as well, and that has RSS support but to me that seems counter to my workflow. Typically I'll be on some site and want to subscribe, and then view in my browser. Doesn't really make sense to be in an email client.
On my phone I use Flym[2]
[0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/collections/4757633...
1) There also doesn't seem to be a way to sort them by date or alphabetical order or domain.[0][1]
2) It seems like it should be possible to 'group' feeds, but I couldn't figure out how.
3) When Firefox updates certain things break
I think as a result of this I will try out newsboat. I found this tutorial[2] that seems to explain it nicely.
[0]: https://github.com/brief-rss/brief/issues/208
Ton on my plate now trying to focus on shipping mobile and a few other features too.
I like the idea of Polar having data sources that are high quality and that the user can just easily subscribe to specific PDFs, research, or high quality content feeds.
We're also going to add social content discovery which is sort of like a Twitter feed but just people who are annotating content on Polar.
Also, copy-pasting is broken:
Bigtableis a distributedstoragesystemformanagingstructureddatathatisdesignedtoscaletoa verylargesize:petabytesofdataacrossthousandsofcommodityservers.
Also, expected keyboard shortcuts (eg hitting delete to delete a document) don't work.
Fortunately, Thunderbird still has this feature.
http://andregarzia.com/2018/11/reading-blogs-with-thunderbir...
I think a similar setup would be good for many people here who wish to read RSS but doesn't want to add another SaaS to their life.
The other in-sync option would be setting up an rss/imap gateway, which is not even available as a SaaS afaik, so would cost about as much in hosting (unless you already have a server you can use) and about 20 times in labor.
Happy paying NewsBlur customer - even though the iOS app is a battery hog.
Where in Thunderbird do you find feeds to subscribe to?
https://support.office.com/en-us/article/what-are-rss-feeds-...
You're right! For users this is absolutely true.
Yet, almost all the companies that you might think of as potentially interested in RSS are platforms. You cannot sell ads in a protocol.
This is the core of why Twitter has replaced RSS. RSS is better for users, but Twitter is better for publishers and platforms. So users wind up following content.
Is it perhaps possible that in this particular case, the difference you so wisely point to between a format and a protocol is possessed of a great and bountiful opportunity to be relevant? The discussion at hand is between "protocols" and "platforms", which might otherwise be cast as "standards" and "products".
Again, you're completely correct. It might just be worth considering that in some cases, a distinction without difference can be of limited value to a discussion where it is at best tangential.
The flexible answer, of course, would be to have a relatively basic core browser and an extension system powerful enough to allow the features to be implemented that way. Like Firefox used to be. Unfortunately, Mozilla decided to neuter the extensions instead.
That said, I would love if Firefox had an excellent RSS experience, but frankly it was always a confusing afterthought.
It used to be called Poche (French word for pocket) but they had to change it becuase of a legal threat from Pocket.
Thunderbird is still a mighty fine RSS reader though.
[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/awesome-rss/
[2] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/rsspreview/
[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/feed-preview/
(It's a shame I couldn't have found this on my own. addons.mozilla.org is unbelievably bad for discovering useful addons. It takes a thread like this to turn you on to the good stuff.)
That worked for a short time until Firefox removed that API. Now I need to install this addon to be able to do it https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/awesome-rss/
It's basically impossible for people to find out how to subscribe to a RSS feed nowadays.
Google failed to gain traction in the social network space with G+. If you can't beat them commoditize them!
Why not make interoperable networks based on open standards first class citizens in chrome/chromium? Not just by adding support but also by helping move the RSS standard forward.
And I'm not only talking about people that produce readers, but also about content creators. I'm making a site and hoping to turn a profit through ads and my interesting content - why would I want to provide a convenient stripped down version of my website for you to consume - something that is a net negative for my revenue (hosting and transferring data costs money)? Sure, I can provide "excerpts" in RSS, but I'd rather prefer you go to my homepage to see what is new - it is thoroughly AB tested to lure you in, spend some time and see some ads - maybe click one.
I just wish some consortium of like minded companies like NYT/WaPo/Guardian/BBCs/Other national dailies, Reddit, Mozilla, and even Microsoft can huddle together and come up with a new name/identity and spread it and popularise it. One can always wish.
As one commentator said in the linked article: protocols are better than platforms.
Edit: The issue here is not about obtaining the feature with add-ons and extensions, which there are many. When the focus of the organisation is on something idealistic (open web), is it too much to expect them to add it to the core of the product?