On: I Still Use RSS

[genmon]

RSS onboarding is a struggle for new users. RSS, unlike commercial products, lacks a "front page" to explain the benefits and how to get started.

Two things that can help:

1. Have a prettified RSS feed that tells new users what it is, rather than showing raw XML. For example here's mine: http://interconnected.org/home/feed

2. (plug) Link to https://aboutfeeds.com which is a one-pager RSS explainer site, providing links to newsreaders and simple instructions on how to subscribe.

[account42 → genmon]

This is really cool, will have to add that to all the feeds I host. Too bad browers can't display RSS feeds themselves anymore without manually adding an XML stylesheet - Firefox used to be able to do that.

[swilliamsio → genmon]

That's awesome. How did you do that?

[pinjasaur → swilliamsio]

I wondered the same thing. Turns out, there's a whole language for XML stylesheets: XSLT[1]. The stylesheet used to style that page is http://interconnected.org/home/static/styles/pretty-feed-v2.... (will probably want to view source).

[1]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/XSLT