Subscribing to RSS Feeds

Remember how some browsers used to have a little "RSS" icon in the title bar?

(... the article with the above picture is really outdated, but... it had the right image to demonstrate.)

I never actually used it, as... adding a feed to some local Firefox feed reader is kinda pointless if you have multiple computers, but... it's still worth comparing the experience of following someone on Twitter / Facebook / even Mastodon:

• Step 1: click "follow"

... to subscribing to an RSS feed:

• Step 1: infer that the website has an RSS feed (it's not entirely obvious)
• Step 2: copy its URL from the title bar
• Step 3: open your RSS reader of choice
• Step 4: dig up "add new feed" on its UI
• Step 5: paste the URI
• Step 6: select the right feed (if there are multiple)

Meanwhile, there is zero browser support for this. (As it looks like, browsers have been losing a lot of UI functionality as time went by.)

A workaround for Miniflux

Here is how to do it in a significantly simpler way with Miniflux, which I'm using; also, Firefox (... but, yet again, this might work in other browsers, too).

Namely, you can add a bookmarklet that leads you to the Miniflux "add feed" page, with the URI already filled out! The bookmarklet looks like this:

javascript:location.href='http://miniflux.your.domain.com/bookmarklet?uri='+encodeURIComponent(window.location.href)

You can actually drag-and-drop this out from miniflux.your.domain.com/integrations (although you might have to edit the domain part). If it's on your bookmarks toolbar, you can just click it to subscribe to any site you're visiting.

(... by the way, see this article on how to make Miniflux / your RSS reader of choice to work from anywhere... and to make it have neat domain names.)

So... this is all great, but... do we have to now stare at the bookmark bar all the time, taking up valuable pixels on the screen?

Keywords

As it turns out: no. You can add a keyword to your bookmarks and bookmarklets, so that if you type it into your title bar, it goes to that URI (... or invokes the bookmarklet!).

So... with the above having been set up, subscribing to a site goes like this:

• Step 1: infer that the website has an RSS feed (okay it's hard to skip that one)
• Step 2: Ctrl+L (to go to the title bar)
• Step 3: type "rss", Enter.
• Step 4: ... and you're in Miniflux already, just about to add a new feed with its title conveniently filled out.



... comments welcome, either in email or on the (eventual) Mastodon post on Fosstodon.