The thing annoying me about this (sensationalist) article is just that… nobody wants to use their web browser for RSS: they want to browse with it.

It also cites the lack of a reader in Chrome as a sign of RSS' impending doom, while ignoring the fact Google also run a (really good) RSS service for free called Google Reader, which is much more intuitively named than RSS and whose name is easier to understand than the RSS icon. By the article's logic, one could also predict the imminent death of word processing, IM, (both of which Google also freely offer) and 99% of other programs, all due to the fact they don't have buttons on Firefox's already over-cluttered toolbar.

For me, the best solution is Opera's. It gives you a sort of summary of the feed when you click on it, and asks you where you want to add it (Opera RSS reader, Google Reader, etc). I click Google Reader and it's added automatically.

That sounds like a good implementation. I imagine the Chrome team would agree, and suggest users install the extension which does just that, if they like it: https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/nlbjncdgjeocebhn...

Actually, just about everything he mentions could be done using a Chrome extension (modifying the new tab page, for example).

I don't use the browser's RSS feature either. I only use Google Reader's web app to subscribe to feeds. When I want to read the articles, I do so on the go, with NetNewsWire or Reeder on iPhone or iPad. Before this blog post, I hadn't even noticed that Chrome doesn't have RSS built-in, so I won't miss it in Firefox 4 either.

It would be nice if Mobile Safari had a button to add feeds to my Google Reader account, but I doubt that will ever happen, unless Apple chooses to implement a similar solution in MobileMe. I would settle for a bookmarklet, though (like Instapaper offers).

In any case, as long as all popular blogging services and CMSes have syndication turned on by default, I don't think we're in any danger of RSS dying off.

Bookmarklet:

  javascript:var%20b=document.body;var%20GR________bookmarklet_domain='http://www.google.com';if(b&&!document.xmlVersion)%7Bvoid(z=document.createElement('script'));void(z.src='http://www.google.com/reader/ui/subscribe-bookmarklet.js');void(b.appendChild(z));%7Delse%7Blocation='http://www.google.com/reader/view/feed/'+encodeURIComponent(location.href)%7D

The link isn't always there, but it appears at times on the "home" page for Reader.

edit: it will, unfortunately, take you to Reader if it finds a feed, to give you the option of subscribing. So it's not quite Instapaper-like. But, better than nothing :) I get a lot of use out of it.

Works great, thanks for the tip!

Sadly, some blogs have begun to rely on RSS functionality in the browser, and don't place an RSS link visibly on the page. That makes it rather difficult to subscribe.

Most of the time you can copy the site's URL into Google Reader and it will try to find the proper RSS feed. It works for blogs hosted on Blogger and Wordpress, at least; not sure how it does it.

"not sure how it does it."

The same way that some browsers do it. There is a meta-tag in the page, which describes which feed formats are available, and where to find them.

<link rel="alternate"> to be precise.

I think it's a bit more than that. It's worked on sites that Safari can't find a feed for, and I presume Safari looks for the meta-tag.

I guess Google Reader uses a database of feeds that other people subscribed to.

For one thing, it shows you the whole history of the feed -- even when the XML itself contains just the few most recent items.

I enter the site name and it works too. Google is good at data parsing :)

In fact, the article is on a site without any visible RSS feed available itself. You have to read the HTML source and manually parse out the rss feed.

And then the author complains that it's hard to use and people aren't taking advantage of it. Jerk.

His whole point is that you should subscribe to feeds from the browser chrome (using the meta tag), not from a link in the page itself.

You only have to read the HTML source if your browser doesn't show you the feed button next to the address bar. That was kind of the author's point.

In fact, I'd bet that part of the reason many people don't use the address bar feed button is because the practice of having links to feeds is so common, and anything on the page is automatically more obvious than something out in the browser chrome.

i couldn't agree more. Breakfast, Coffee and Reeder is my morning routine.

And a browser's RSS features are indeed too limited - third-party web- and mobile apps are much more sophisticated when it comes to RSS.

What I'm more worried about is the trend to only show an excerpt or introduction of an increasing number of articles. Given the fact that most of those sites rely on ads, it's fair to do that though.

Excerpts only in RSS annoy the hell out of me and here's why: I usually read my RSS feed in Reeder on my iPhone during my morning commute. There's still no mobile reception on the London Underground (I'll resist the temptation for now and save that rant for another time) meaning that all I can read is what have been cached by Reeder before I left home. Which means that I'm unable to read posts that only have excerpts in RSS. They should figure out some other way to monetize their RSS feeds; I particularly like Daring Fireball's approach of having sponsored RSS-only posts every now and then (that are actually interesting to read).

Full text RSS makes it really easy for your content to show up on spam blogs, which is why I think it's not used all the time.

You might be interested this in this article: http://www.steverubel.com/instapaper-20-turns-every-rss-feed...

Email me (address is in my profile) and I'll send you a promo code for Printful. It extracts full articles from web pages, so you'll be able to read all your news from the underground.