[Fileformat]

Making RSS/Atom feeds friendly to new users is key for its adoption, and for the open web. XSLT is the best way to do that.

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/

[shadowgovt]

RSS and Atom feeds are at this point a solution looking for a problem.

I use RSS all the time... To keep up-to-date on podcasts. But for keeping up to date on news, people use social media. RSS isn't the missing piece of the puzzle for changing that, an app on top of RSS is. And in the absence of Reader, nothing has shown up to fill that role that can compete with just trading gossip on Facebook.

[basscomm]

> But for keeping up to date on news, people use social media. RSS isn't the missing piece of the puzzle for changing that, an app on top of RSS is. And in the absence of Reader, nothing has shown up to fill that role that can compete with just trading gossip on Facebook.

I guess if you don't use social media or facebook you're out of luck?

[cpill]

yes, but why??? Your on the website and you have a link to the syndicated feed, for the website your on, and you want to make they feed look good in the browser... so they can click the link to the website _you are already on_??? The argument you should be looking at the feed XML in the browser instead of the website is bonkers. They are not meant to replace the website coz if they were why have the website?!

[Fileformat]

But you are tech-savvy and know about RSS & feed readers and such like!

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.

[kstrauser]

I just checked and I’ve had 3 hits for my blog’s RSS feed from a legit-looking browser user agent string this year. Almost literally no one reads my site via RSS in the browser. Quite a few people fetch the feed from separate clients.

I wouldn’t spend 5 minutes making that feed look pretty for browser users because no one will ever see it. I don’t know who these mythical visitors are who 1) know what RSS is and 2) want to look at it in Chrome or Safari or Firefox.