.. title: RSS Is Dead. Long Live RSS!
.. slug: rss-is-dead-long-live-rss
.. date: 2018-08-07 17:42:17 UTC+02:00
.. tags: nextcloud, rss, nextcloud-news
.. category:
.. link:
.. description:
.. type: text

Mozilla published its intent to `remove RSS support in Firefox 63 or
Firefox 64 <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1477667>`_ .
The reasoning is that the feature is not widely used and so the code
has become a large burden on the rest of the code base.  Without
knowing the Firefox code base, this explanation makes a lot of sense.

A comment on the previous post :doc:`increasingly-user-hostile-web`
got me started using RSS only a few months ago, but because this
workflow naturally supports reading news from different devices, it
has become part of my daily workflow.  All that was needed was the
installation of `Nextcloud News App
<https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/news>`_ on my existing server.

.. image:: /images/Nextcloud_Logo.svg.png
   :width: 200
   :align: center
   :alt: FRDM-K64F

.. TEASER_END

For the app to work correctly, the Nextcloud installation needs to be
able to periodically check for new updates, so `configuring Cron or
Webcron
<https://docs.nextcloud.com/server/13/admin_manual/configuration_server/background_jobs_configuration.html>`_
is required.  As my hoster allows cron-jobs, this is the option I
chose.

As can be seen from the screen-shot, the interface is very lean but
intuitive.  I would like to see some improvements for editing the
subscription lists, but all in all the app does its job well.

.. image:: /images/nextcloud-news-screenshot.png
   :alt: Screenshot from News App
   :align: center

As the server keeps state of what I already saw, it is absolutely
transparent to access the App from multiple devices without missing a
single item.  In combination with the Firefox feature to `send a tab
from an Android device to another computer
<https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/using-tabs-firefox-android#w_send-a-tab-from-your-android-device>`_,
this is also perfect for discovering interesting content even "on the
road" and sending the tab to a workplace better suited for subsequent
longer reads.

So with this setup RSS has become a very convenient tool for me to
stay up to date with regard to different sources.  It takes some time
to discover the interesting RSS feeds, but they are definitely
available, as they are implemented by the underlying infrastructure
anyway.  Just like Nikola implements the RSS feed for this blog
without additional effort.

Although Firefox now looses its own tools, it supports my setup nicely
as clicking on RSS feeds automatically opens the "add subscription"
page of the News App on the Nextcloud server without manual
intervention. Nice!