Don't kill my pretty RSS feed (XSLT)
justinjackson.ca
XSLT makes RSS feeds readable for normies. Chrome is removing it by 2026. Here's why that matters for podcasters and the open web.
  • Gormadt@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    50 minutes

    YouTube broke my RSS feed for YouTube subscriptions by breaking how embedded videos works.

    Now when I try to click on videos in my RSS feed it just gets me “Error 153” every time.

    It’s so frustrating!

    I’m currently using Feedbro on Firefox (the add-on hasn’t been updated in 2 years) but if anyone has any recommendations that don’t get that error I’m all ears!

  • vortexal@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    1 hour

    I’m a little confused about this. While I’ve been using RSS feeds for several years, my only experience with RSS feeds is with Inoreader. Will this cause issues with the way that I’ve been using RSS feeds or will I be unaffected?

    • knightly the Sneptaur@pawb.socialEnglish
      33 minutes

      Only if you’re using the Chrome extension, maybe. This is just Google trying to kill even the memory of Google Reader by fucking with the biggest competitor to social media in Chrome.

  • MinnesotaGoddam@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3 hours

    i browsed the web via RSS for a while. Maybe it’s time to get back to that. at least for some food blogs or something. anyone got a good rss reader?

    • Vegafjord eo@lemmy.mlEnglish
      2 hours

      I like miniflux. Lightweight, web based, selfhostable, assisted hosting and compatible with third party clients.

    • SpookyBogMonster@lemmy.mlEnglish
      2 hours

      I use FluentReader, and an extension that restores Firefox’s old RSS functionality.

  • JuvenoiaAgent@piefed.caEnglish
    5 hours

    I remember using XSLT to make my site’s RSS look good around 20 years ago. I thought it was so cool, though XSLT was awful to write.

  • Feyd@programming.devEnglish
    9 hours

    Chrome’s team argues that because only about 0.02% of page loads use XSLT, it’s not worth the maintenance burden.

    Surely given the volume of browser usage, 0.02% is still a very substantial amount of usage. Lazy fucks

    • cecilkorik@piefed.caEnglish
      46 minutes

      0.02% of page loads is honestly way more than I would’ve expected. The fact that they would look at that number and see an excuse to remove a feature like this is honestly a gigantic red flag for the way these browsers are being developed. Granted, it’s not that surprising if you’ve been paying attention to the embrace-extend-extinguish march of web technologies towards a walled garden controlled by tech giants, but this is part of the writing on the wall, folks.

    • Kushan@lemmy.worldEnglish
      9 hours

      I’m not entirely sure what the “maintenance burden” even is on a tech that hasn’t changed in decades.

      • halfapage@lemmy.worldEnglish
        8 hours

        what burden? I thought burdens don’t exist anymore thanks to the power of LLMs???

      • floofloof@lemmy.caEnglish
        3 hours

        From the article:

        Google says it’s removing XSLT to address security vulnerabilities. The underlying library that processes XSLT in Chrome (libxslt) is an aging C/C++ codebase with known memory safety issues. Chrome’s team argues that because only about 0.02% of page loads use XSLT, it’s not worth the maintenance burden.

        It’s debatable whether Google, with all its resources, really needs to do this, especially given that 0.02% of all page loads is still quite a lot. But there are certainly times when it’s better to just delete seldom-used old code from your project to lower the maintenance burden and reduce the surface area for attacks.

    • smh@slrpnk.netEnglish
      2 hours

      We use it at my library/archive to convert EADs (XML finding aids) into something we can present to a human.

      This change breaks something that’s been working for us without issue for over a decade, and it’s personally a PITA because I’m the only dev-adjacent person in the library and fixing this takes me away from other stuff. (I’m spread thin and we’ve been in a hiring freeze for 5 years. I love my coworkers but there’s so much work stuff I have to deprioritoze in order to do the important stuff, it feels unfair when a big corporation decides to break something on me.)

    • confuser@lemmy.zipEnglish
      8 hours

      It seems to have to do with how it looks formatting wise and not about availability or not, that is what is being meant.

      • Björn@swg-empire.deEnglish
        7 hours

        That’s just for those few websites that use their RSS feed as their content source. If they want to keep doing that they can just get a JavaScript library that provides XSLT functionality. The feed itself is untouched.

          • Björn@swg-empire.deEnglish
            2 hours

            It’s really hard to decide whether XSLT or JavaScript is worse. On the one hand XSLT wasn’t cobbled together in a weekend. On the other it requires you to write XML and its “arrays” start at 1.

        • _wizard@lemmy.worldEnglish
          7 hours

          So things like newsbreak who ingest a sites feed then display?

          • Serinus@lemmy.worldEnglish
            7 hours

            Should be fine. They don’t have to use a browser to retrieve that feed.

  • Clent@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    9 hours

    There are libraries that can polyfill this with almost zero effort. List should not effect any active site that offers rss feeds.