Show HN: RSS Launchpad – a tiny Firefox (mobile) RSS extension extractor

Hello there!

I'm sharing a small Firefox extension that I created for my own use (and for fun, of course!). The extension partially restores the RSS support that was removed from major browsers a long time ago: it extracts (or derives) RSS feeds from pages and shows them in a nice way and easy to export to some external reader.

Motive I've been reading HN for quite some time, and some articles there helped me rediscover RSS. Nowadays, it has become my top source for reading, especially on tech topics, helping me to focus and detox from social media.

There are a few reasons for its existence compared to other extensions I was able to find, primarily:

- I wanted an up-to-date extension with the fewest possible permissions (hence, no global background scripts, most FF extensions ask this). This extension can only access the active tab and only when it is used.

- I aimed for a native look and feel, including Firefox for Android.

- I wanted some special logic for websites that support RSS but hide it (like YouTube).

So sharing it here for other RSS enthusiasts! All MIT Licensed.

Links: Gif screencast: https://github.com/ilya-m32/rss-launchpad/raw/master/screenc...

Firefox addons page: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/rss-launchpad...

Edit: \n added

github.com

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7 points

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k0tan32

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7 days ago

3 comments

domysee ・ 6 days ago

It's nice that people care about RSS and add tools for it!

Btw if you want to improve the feed finding, here's an article that lists a bunch of ways for finding them even if they're not linked in the html metadata.

https://lighthouseapp.io/blog/deep-dive-finding-rss-feeds

  • k0tan32 ・ 4 days ago

    Thanks for sharing, I'll check it out! Lighthouse seems to go much further in extracting the feeds and even finds some likely variants by brute force or crawls for links.

    For this browser extension I aim to have a small but curated list of ad-hoc derives instead of one-fits-all solution. This makes me wonder: if RSS is supported by a website but is not accessible at all, perhaps the right approach would be to simply ask the owners to provide access to it.

    • domysee ・ 4 days ago

      That all depends on how much time you have. Also, WordPress and other software create RSS feeds by default, so many people don't even know their website has a feed.