Mozilla plans to remove RSS feed reader and Live Bookmarks support from Firefox

Martin Brinkmann
Jul 25, 2018
Firefox
|
105

A recent entry on Mozilla's bug tracking website Bugzilla@Mozilla indicates that Mozilla plans to cut RSS feed reader and Live Bookmarks support from the organization's Firefox web browser.

After careful consideration of various options (which also included doing nothing, or investing heavily in updating the code), we've decided to go ahead and remove builtin feed support from Firefox.

Mozilla's current plan aims for a removal of both features in Firefox 63 or Firefox 64, out October or December 2018. The change won't affect the current Firefox 60 ESR version but the next Firefox ESR after Firefox 60 ESR won't support both features anymore as well.

We published an overview of Live Bookmarks in 2014, but Firefox supported the feature for much longer. Live Bookmarks allowed Firefox users to subscribe to a site's RSS feed so that new articles would be displayed in a bookmarks folder in the web browser.

Feed Reader support on the other hand displays a special subscribe page when users loaded Feed URLs directly in the browser.

It included options to subscribe to the feed using Live Bookmarks or external applications, and it displayed the parsed feed on the page.

Why is Mozilla making the change?

Mozilla analyzed usage of the functionality, the technical implementation and state, maintenance costs, and state of traditional RSS feed usage on the web.

The organization discovered that Live Bookmarks and RSS feed reader support "had an outsized maintenance and security impact relative to their usage". Improving these features and test scenarios would "have cost significant time and effort", and current usage of "these features doesn't justify such an investment".

Live bookmarks and feed viewer are not "offering features users want" according to Mozilla. The organization refers to live bookmarks not supporting any states like read and does not really work well with sync. Furthermore, both features are not supported on Android or iOS, and podcasts are not supported either.

Mozilla discovered that the vast majority of Firefox users, 99.9% according to the organization, don't use the functionality at all. Additionally, Mozilla notes, that RSS/Atom has been in decline and support has been dropped by companies such as Google (Google Reader), or Apple (Apple Mail), or changed focus.

Mozilla is working on alternatives such as Pocket or Reader Mode, and on improving WebExtensions which could provide features related to RSS/Atom feeds without the toll on maintenance.

What happens to existing Live Bookmarks

Firefox will export all existing live bookmarks to an OPML file automatically to preserve the subscriptions. All live bookmarks are changed to regular static bookmarks if Mozilla can identify the site URL. Live bookmarks will be removed if it is not possible to to do.

Mozilla plans to display information to users about the change and provide suggestions in form of options that users could follow to continue consuming feeds.

Tip: Check out our list of free RSS readers for Windows.

Closing Words

Live Bookmarks are used by a dedicated group of Firefox users, and while the group may be low compared to the group that does not use the functionality, removal will impact the workflow of those users.

Firefox users who don't want to lose access to Live Bookmarks functionality may switch to Firefox ESR 60 but that is only a temporary solution. Browsers like Pale Moon won't cut support while others, Waterfox or SeaMonkey, have not made an announcement yet in that regard.

Now You: Are you impacted by the removal?

Summary
Mozilla plans to remove RSS feed reader and Live Bookmarks support from Firefox
Article Name
Mozilla plans to remove RSS feed reader and Live Bookmarks support from Firefox
Description
Mozilla plans to cut RSS feed reader and Live Bookmarks support from the organization's Firefox web browser in version 63 or 64.
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Ghacks Technology News
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Comments

  1. Grumpy said on April 20, 2019 at 6:24 am
    Reply

    I found Livemarks by Tim Nguyen, Tom Schuster .which restore the functionality similar to how it use to be. Works really well.

    https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/livemarks/?src=search

  2. Anonymous said on January 16, 2019 at 12:25 pm
    Reply

    disappointed Live RSS feed has been removed. its the only main reason i use firefox as it provide good insight of the RSS feeds. now will remove firefox and stick with Google Chorme as it also support extensions.

  3. finnish guy said on January 1, 2019 at 8:29 pm
    Reply

    I started to use Basilisk. Supports RSS, DownThemAll, Classic theme restorer, etc

  4. Anonymous said on December 30, 2018 at 9:23 am
    Reply

    At least we had it for the time we did.

  5. Léon said on December 28, 2018 at 4:08 pm
    Reply

    It can’t be repeated often enough: go to Waterfox.

    Everything that Firefox destroyed in the past few years is still there: every addon, and also live bookmarks.

  6. M.Szeliga said on December 17, 2018 at 10:52 pm
    Reply

    This sucks! That was one of the most used features, just get the headlines and click if you want more.

    No Mozilla, that decision is NOT anything I can use.

    1. Dave Sparks said on December 21, 2018 at 12:02 am
      Reply

      I agree. There are just a few websites (blogs) I follow, but they each post several articles per day. Having each as a live bookmark button means I can quickly click each one occasionally to see all the latest headlines — and headlines have different icons depending on whether I’ve already clicked to read those articles.

      My solution? I’m not upgrading to Firefox 64.

      As a bonus, I don’t have to worry about an update causing any add-ons to stop working.

    2. J. Beck said on December 18, 2018 at 3:02 pm
      Reply

      Yes, this sucks!

      In five minutes Firefox won’t be on this computer anymore.

  7. Léon said on December 14, 2018 at 8:19 pm
    Reply

    Hello Jorge,

    The add-on ‘Feedbro’ is a very good alternative for RSS-feeds.

    A very good alternative for Firefox is Waterfox.

  8. Jorge said on December 14, 2018 at 5:37 pm
    Reply

    “Are you impacted by the removal?”

    Yes I am. Deeply impacted.

    RSS and Live bookmarks were the very features that prevented me to swich to Chrome or another browser. I used these everyday.

    Please Mozilla, consider re-enabling these features!!!

    Jorge

  9. gardenman said on December 11, 2018 at 8:19 pm
    Reply

    I guess I’m one of the 1% who used this feature every day. I had RSS feeds for news organizations in Live Bookmarks. I visit the sites each morning then I would check the Live Bookmarks throughout the day to see if any new interesting stories had popped up. I’m not a Firefox beta tester so I didn’t know this was going to happen today.

    I know of at least 3 free RSS feed readers but none of them have interested me enough to install on my real system. I guess I’ll be looking them over once again, or I might just drop it all together. This was a bad decision by FireFox. Don’t all of the other browsers still support it? And why are they pushing this Pocket junk? Money.

    Another alternative for me is Rainmeter. I already have it installed and there are RSS skins available for it. I’d rather have it in a simple bookmarks menu rather than a big gaudy skin on my desktop 24/7.

    1. HdeA said on December 13, 2018 at 6:53 pm
      Reply

      I use it almost hourly to check up on the news until all my feeds disappeared without warning after today’s update.

      The “issues” Mozilla gives are all nonsense too:

      “It doesn’t remember what you read” – somehow for me it did, I wouldn’t care if it wouldn’t either.
      “Doesn’t work with FF Sync” – never used it, never will, and probably most people won’t.
      “Not available for mobile devices” – I don’t care, I want it on my desktop.
      “Doesn’t work well with podcasts” – works fine for me.
      “Only 0.1% of users uses it” – I disabled sharing of statistics, like many people, so how can they be sure?
      “Outdated code” – so what?

      Meanwhile I am still waiting for replacements for all the add-ons that stopped working after the Quantum update and now I have to find yet another add-on that will probably never fully replace the original functionality.

      1. Clairvaux said on December 14, 2018 at 12:58 pm
        Reply

        Since we did not care to polish this feature, we accuse it of being bad, so we think it’s better to remove it altogether. Bad features find their way into Firefox. We don’t know who put it here. Some schmuck failed to develop and maintain it properly. Shit happens, at it’s always other people’s fault.

    2. Clairvaux said on December 11, 2018 at 8:39 pm
      Reply

      I didn’t use Firefox RSS feature, but RSS is indeed, to this day, one of the best ways to stay on top of things. I monitor Ghacks (and many other sites) through RSS.

      However, Twitter, Facebook and the rest needed to impose themselves here, and the only aim is to make more money. RSS does not make a lot of moola for a lot of people, so of course it must be driven to oblivion, although it’s a perfectly useful and efficient technology.

  10. Anonymous said on December 7, 2018 at 12:52 pm
    Reply

    Are you impacted by the removal?

    I´m totally impacted. It´s my entry point to the web. If mozilla removes this feature … DON´T DO IT !!!

  11. Anonymous said on October 10, 2018 at 1:16 am
    Reply

    What a stupid decision … have nothing else to say.

  12. Othmane said on July 29, 2018 at 11:32 am
    Reply

    Use RSS feeds to get the latest updates from Arch Linux news feed ans also to monitor my github activity. I don’t want to install another application just to read RSS, it’s much less distracting when you have all your web activities focused in the same application (your web browser)

  13. struppi said on July 27, 2018 at 9:42 pm
    Reply

    The RSS live Bookmarks would be the last feature of Firefox, if I would use it. Since Mozilla removes the “ask Cookie” option. Thry remove everything I liked when I started to use Firefox (from the beginning. My first Browser was Netscape Gold).

    Times ago I installed Firefox on every computer when I helped people. Now they I see everywhere chrome.

    I use Palemoon, a programm with all features Firefox had.

  14. Anonymous said on July 27, 2018 at 4:19 pm
    Reply

    Guess that’s the end of firefox for me then.

    pale moon will have to do.

  15. Ann said on July 27, 2018 at 4:12 pm
    Reply

    NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooo!!!!!!!!!

    please don’t

    that’s how I follow most news sites and did like the way it is implemented in FF.
    Can’t see any drawback like some say above.
    it’s handy and don’t have to use any other app.

    and i hate it when websites stop giving RSS feed, that’s about the time I stop following those sites.
    at this moment I still follow 10 sites that way.

    used to have plugins/addons to use RSS, but they were way worse then how FF implements it.

  16. Mark said on July 27, 2018 at 3:49 pm
    Reply

    Good. I’m happy they remove some of the stuff I’ll never use and that can be implemented as an optional addon.

  17. happysurf said on July 27, 2018 at 1:09 pm
    Reply

    For me is a sad news.
    I use Netvibes for read my RSS articles, for that I need to discover the feeds inside a web page to save.

  18. George said on July 27, 2018 at 1:08 pm
    Reply

    Yet another useful feature (essential for some) bites the dust in the name of “modernisation”. Makes you wonder what’s next.

  19. Léon said on July 27, 2018 at 10:40 am
    Reply

    As a long term enthusiastic RSS-feed follower, and browser switcher, I found a very good solution in the end: add Feedbro as a browser extension (Opera, Firefox or Chrome) and leave it always open as a pinned tab.

    Make folders in Feedbro and follow all kinds of substance in one glance.

    Works easy and perfect. I even use it for podcasts.

    1. Clairvaux said on July 27, 2018 at 4:25 pm
      Reply

      Hi Léon,

      Let me ask you a few questions since you’re a Feedbro user. I’ve had a short try at it, and found it could be good… if some things were corrected.

      – Did you find a way to make sub-folders for the feeds explorer pane on the left ? I didn’t, and I think it’s a deal-breaker.

      – Did you find a way to open the RSS tab with a single click ? In my experience, you need at least 2 : click on the Feedbro icon, click Open Feed Reader.

      – Hod does one cram the most news in a given area of screen space ? I tried mode 3 and 6, but those show less items than Quite RSS, although the resulting layout is nice. Can you adjust the titles’ size ? Are there other display settings available to such effect ?

      – Is there a way to have the program backup its data automatically in a custom folder ? Also a basic requirement if such an extension is to be used professionally, in my opinion.

      Thank you.

      P.S.: Fun fact : Quite RSS, which seems to be the only serious, desktop RSS reader left out there, seems to still be in beta, according to version numbers : the current one is 0.8.12…

      1. Léon said on July 27, 2018 at 4:59 pm
        Reply

        Hello Clairvaux,

        Why should you have sub-folders? Just make folders.

        When you click on a title in the right panel, you go straight to the website concerned. Podcasts can be immediately downloaded, by clicking “View enclosure”.

        The right side panel is very easy in scrolling down.

        When you click on the folder name, you get all the feeds mixed of the whole folder content. You can also click on just one feed item.

        Back-ups can be made by exporting as .opml, (now and then).

        Because the Feedbro icon is very far away on the upper right side in Opera (by clicking on it, you can go immediately to the feeds), I got the idea to pin the Feedbro tab and leave it permanently open. Now the feeds are always near.

        It’s all utterly simple.

      2. Clairvaux said on July 27, 2018 at 8:29 pm
        Reply

        “Why should you have sub-folders? Just make folders.”

        Ha ! You got me there. A sizeable part of my life has been devoted to making sub-folders… while the solution was so darn simple.

        “When you click on a title in the right panel, you go straight to the website concerned.”

        Quite right. However, I have since discovered that clicking on a title in the center panel does not always open the website. It depends. It changes according to the view you’ve selected. This is even worse than never opening the website.

        Again, in my imaginary dictatorship ruled by ease of use nazis, this would lead you to the gallows twice : once for breaking a universal user interface rule (if something can be opened, clicking on it must open it), and a second time for breaking the consistency rule (if something is done in some way in one part of the software, it should not be done in a different way in a different part of the software).

        Clicking in the Feedbro icon does not lead you to the feeds. It only shows you the last ten, which is irrelevant to me (I monitor far too many sources). What I need is to open the full feeds page, and it takes two clicks. Okay, this is a minor gripe, and even thus, it’s probably quicker than to alternate between Quick RSS and Firefox.

        I know that feeds can be exported manually, and that’s a good thing. However, I want to be able to chose the folder where the extension stores backup data, because then, I can devise a routine in my backup program to have this saved offline everyday, on top of my other wholesale backups. My list of feeds is very valuable, and it would take me a huge amount of time to rebuild it from scratch.

        So no, it’s not that simple. Ironing out even basic flaws takes a lot of time and thinking, and far too many extensions are just sloppily put together.

        Feedbro does seem to be a very interesting starting point, and in many ways it’s a more pleasant experience than Quite RSS. Unfortunately, it’s half-baked. I would very much like to see those flaws corrected. It could even make me switch from Quite RSS.

      3. John Fenderson said on July 27, 2018 at 7:24 pm
        Reply

        @Léon: “Why should you have sub-folders?”

        I’m not Clairvaux, but I would find the lack of subfolders to be a serious drawback. If you have accumulated a lot of feeds, subfolders become important for organizing and viewing them in a reasonable way.

        Same with bookmarks.

      4. Tom Hawack said on July 27, 2018 at 7:46 pm
        Reply

        I have to agree with that. Any organization of many items requires sub-folders. Imagine a browser’s bookmarks available only from one and one only root folder? I think this is a good suggestion for the Feedbro extension.

      5. Tom Hawack said on July 27, 2018 at 5:46 pm
        Reply

        About Feedbro’s toolbar button function : Main page / Settings / Feedbro extension icon click

        There is an interesting way to proceed in order to have Feefbro appear as the ‘Open with’ dialog included in Firefox’s native RSS subscription page: This is detailed in Feedbro’s Main Page / ‘Known Issues’, quote :

        There is no API for adding Feedbro as a ContentHandler so that Feedbro would appear in the dropdown list when you open a feed in a
        browser tab and see the “Subscribe to this feed using”. If you want to have Feedbro in that menu, you have to add the handler manually.
        Alternatively you can click the Feedbro extension icon and select “Find Feeds in Current Tab”.

        To add the content handler, open a new tab with URI about:config

        Type in browser.contentHandlers and you should see a list of preferences. Check what is the number of the last
        browser.contentHandler. setting and use the next number to enter settings for Feedbro like this (we assume that 4 is the next
        free number):

        NOTE! You must copy+paste the URL from Feedbro Reader view and modify it so that after the reader.html you have ?preview=%s

        Preference Name Type Value
        browser.contentHandlers.types.*.title String Feedbro
        browser.contentHandlers.types.*.type String application/vnd.mozilla.maybe.feed
        browser.contentHandlers.types.*.uri String moz-extension://[FEEDBRO UUID]/reader.html?preview=%s

        * = last browser.contentHandlers.types. PLUS 1

        Works like a charm. So you can have Feedbro’s toolbar button open its Feed Reader and Firefox’s RSS Feed Subscription page include Feedbro… perfect. You’re on a site, Firefox’s RSS Subscribe toolbar button turns to dark meaning a feed is available, click (choose), you get the basic feed + subscription menu, you choose Feedbro, et voila.

      6. manouche said on July 27, 2018 at 11:16 pm
        Reply

        The question is, does your hack still works when Live Booksmark is removed?

        “Brief RSS Reader” par exemple does not use the “Firefox’s RSS Feed Subscription Page” at all. For more information you may read this discussion.

        https://github.com/brief-rss/brief/issues/343#issuecomment-396304298

        In my opinion “Feedbro Reader” is a bit overwhelming in its functionality. But as always, every jar needs its lid and every beatified user his speciality in which he can work wonders as the officially certified ghacks.net super-user.

        I prefer to stick to Brief ’cause it’s easier to handle for a simple-minded manouche like me.

        Happy RSS reading ;-)

  20. Evangelical said on July 27, 2018 at 9:04 am
    Reply

    Hey Martin, you forgot to address that they also removed “Never check for updates” in Nightly recently – https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1420514

    That caused some uproar on the unofficial reddit too.

  21. John said on July 26, 2018 at 10:17 pm
    Reply

    I use RSS daily. I read articles on scores of sites daily through their RSS feeds. I cam to this article through the RSS feed.

    However, I use a stand-alone RSS app. I don’t use Live Bookmarks. I do use Firefox’s Feed Reader to preview feeds before I subscribe, but that’s not a big deal.

    I realize RSS isn’t a big thing for most people. But for people who use it, it’s a *very* big thing. I have no idea how I would process and consume the volume of information I do without RSS. Social media can’t handle it. That’s for people with a more casual consumption of information.

    So I’m okay with Firefox deprecating RSS support. I don’t really use it in Firefox. But RSS is an essential part of my workflow.

  22. Jozsef said on July 26, 2018 at 5:02 pm
    Reply

    Since Mozilla’s patron saint is now Procrustes, perhaps a rebranding is in order to celebrate him soon. One has to wonder what else they can find to remove since most people do no customization at all and have never heard of any features or extensions. Since after more than two decades of supplying computers, I know exactly three people who care at all about security or privacy, it would seem that tossing that whole area of concern aside would save Mozilla a great deal of time and effort. Since they are now the champions of Orwellian enforced conformity, continuing to claim the moral high ground while actually doing nothing to protect their users should not be a challenge for them. In fact, by their allowing insecure or malicious untested extensions on the Add Ons site, we can see that this approach has already been adopted.

    It is sad but in reality, a product or an organization is its people and when they move on, what remains may be not at all what it once was. The good news is that noble and visionary people will never disappear and new ones will eventually come along to fill the void. RIP, Firefox.

  23. Richard said on July 26, 2018 at 4:51 pm
    Reply

    I’m using the RSS Live Bookmarks all the time in Waterfox. I hope Waterfox will keep them (as well as the “Legacy addons”).

  24. zakius said on July 26, 2018 at 3:24 pm
    Reply

    hey moz guys, you know
    live bookmarks weren’t used as it was poor implementation
    but instead of removing them you should provide proper, full fledged reader (see newsfox)
    but well, we all know you management became money hungry, sacrificing everything that made your browser worthwhile for advertising and noise
    positive, negative, whatever, it’s all good as long as people talk about you

  25. mike said on July 26, 2018 at 2:48 pm
    Reply

    I thought it didn’t affect me, but I have one live bookmark left: BBC News.
    I’d be sorry to see it go if I updated so I definitely won’t.
    I migrated to Google Reader, then Feedly which is much quicker and easier.
    RSS makes up the bulk of my web usage, I check over 1000 sites per day.
    Perhaps because I don’t use Facebook or Twitter I’m behind the curve.
    Yet I don’t feel the loss and as efficient surfing is the aim, I’m ok with it..

  26. Clairvaux said on July 26, 2018 at 1:30 pm
    Reply

    Hi Martin,

    It seems now I’m receiving an email to “confirm subscription” for each commented post. Very cumbersome, especially given that the included link is non-clickable. Tick the box, receive an email, reply the email.

    Is that some sort of GDPR-mandated malarky ? As far as I am concerned, I trust you. I don’t need GDPR mama to come on top of that — not for your site, anyway. Could you maybe break the law a little bit ?

    1. Martin Brinkmann said on July 26, 2018 at 6:22 pm
      Reply

      Yes that is because of it. I look into a solution but I don’t think there is one.

  27. Franck said on July 26, 2018 at 11:18 am
    Reply

    Bad news, I use it all the time, it is much quicker than loading a website to see if there is a new article…

  28. Tom Hawack said on July 26, 2018 at 10:25 am
    Reply

    I use the Firefox ‘Cookiebro’ extension for reading/managing RSS feeds. Feed urls may be added to the extension directly or via Firefox’s feed subscription page given a few settings be modified in about:config to include Feedbro in the feed subscription dialog.

    With Mozilla’s announced removal of Firefox’s RSS feed reader I’ll have to add RSS feeds from Cookiebro itself, not a big deal.

    I never used Firefox’s Live Bookmarks because I consider it’s not sufficiently elaborated. With Firefox versions previous to 57 Quantum I had used for years ‘Sage++ (Higmmer’s Edition)’ feed reader and switched to ‘Cookiebro’ after given the former wouldn’t be updated, though there is the ‘Drop Feeds’ extension which announces itself as inspired by ‘Sage++ (Higmmer’s Edition)’, but less elaborated IMO than ‘Feedbro’.

    Yes, this is what I read quite often on the Web, that RSS feeds are on the decline. Personally I’m an RSS fan, I just love having a site’s latest articles summarized on one page, so useful especially for multiple sites’ quick scan.

    1. Shiva said on July 26, 2018 at 4:44 pm
      Reply

      Thanks Tom. Another good good addon suggestion (Cookieebro). The last one, Skip Redirect, is very useful; it work well wiith Redirector and CleanURL. I’m a fan of RSS feeds too and I don’t use social. I’m beginning begin to get curious about your full addon-list to compare witn mine.

      1. Tom Hawack said on July 26, 2018 at 6:55 pm
        Reply

        @Shiva, your curiosity got me to wonder how to make a simple htm file available on-line (Pastebin handles only the txt format) and I’ve found this place : Uguu.se, but uploads remain available for only 24 hours!

        So, my extensions, here & now?
        https://a.uguu.se/zuOJpb5TMG2r_FFextensions.htm (available until 2018-07-27-16:45GMT)

        Tell me about yours!

      2. Shiva said on July 26, 2018 at 8:04 pm
        Reply

        Oh! Same for me: I just added Sysexplorer to my Nirsoft collection! Thanks, your list could be useful for the impending doom. On the other hand my list has to be refined a little bit.
        https://a.uguu.se/Zz0VyYjzcYXW_FFextensions

      3. Tom Hawack said on July 26, 2018 at 10:35 pm
        Reply

        @Shiva, I notice you’re running FF 52.9.0 which means that some of the (many) add-ons are maybe obsolete when it comes to FF57+ (Quantum). I recognize some which recall me what already appears as a far past. Time flies. I notice Kaspersky which has has set its add-on… I think I know all these extensions, would take some time to comment on them all. Nice :=)

        P.S. You removed the .htm in your uguu.se url :=)

      4. Shiva said on July 27, 2018 at 8:34 am
        Reply

        @Tom, I know it. Now it is the right time to imagine me as an old sicily crying mama with its pre-australis theme. But I need to state one detail: simply I will not update to Quantum without some add-ons or good alternatives. Flashgot is one of them. Or Auto Close Tab that I use for work when I have to update many scientific paper from Science Direct (download popup doesn’t close itself). I get use to All-In-One-Sidebar too much and I stay well with my add-ons icon bottom bar. There is an alternative for Image Picker but I really like it. And I can continue… Now RSS feeds too…
        I’ll wait some months to see what happens, at the moment my setting still work with Basilisk or Waterfox but the first is still a beta and the second I’m afraid of it will no longer compatible. Kaspersky always had its add-on, only one since 2017 If I remember (there were three before).

        PS: first time with uguu.se and is already a miracle that with only 20 min (and two intense cigarettes) I discovered your trick to export add-on list. Ok Sysexporter, but on CCleaner right?

      5. Tom Hawack said on July 27, 2018 at 1:42 pm
        Reply

        @SShiva, hi :=)
        Last things first : I indeed used SySExporter on CCleaner / Tools / Browser Plugins / Firefox
        That’s why the my exported htm file was so small. I think you used SysExporter on another application (seems to be a Microsoft one), hence 170KB+ …not important in fact as long as we get things done!

        Two intense cigarettes within 20 minutes? Na, too much tobacco!. The male I am has the privilege to smoke pipe tobacco (though I know that in Scandinavia women smoke pipe as well).

        Sicily then? I did recognize the Italian language in your SysExporter exported file. Such a beautiful language. Sicilian and mama? Hmmm… I can smell the tomato sauce from here! (I know, that’s another cliché!). Old? Years don’t count and if they do then I’d probably be the elder but I’ll never know because you don’t ask ladies their age :=)

        Back to Firefox and its add-ons/extensions — I was in no way implicitly pointing out your version 52 of Firefox to criticize that choice : we do what we want, right?!
        I had been confronted as well to the add-on problematic when I upgraded to Firefox 57. Before that I had about 70 (seventy!) add-ons running. I made another choice than to keep them by keeping an older Firefox versions, or at least those add-ons not updated to their Webextension equivalence. It seemed tough at the time because as you, as us all, we get used to tools we work with intensively, we establish habits via references. But when we bypass those habits we often realize that what seemed to be a nightmare is finally resolved by our natural adaptability.

        Perhaps nevertheless may I bring your attention to the fact that new versions don’t only bring their lot of new/abandoned features but mainly and above all their security enhancements. Be careful with that, Shiva. But i’m sure you’re aware of that.

        Have a splendid day, read you later :=)

      6. Shiva said on July 27, 2018 at 9:41 pm
        Reply

        You have right, two cigarettes are very bad but they are an exception due problem solving on PC (and the question after 10 minutes was: how fuck Tom has exported these fucking add-ons in that way! :-) ). However there’s no excuse and in the past I also made an university biostatistic exam to know that the probability to stay in the right % of healthy smoking people is really really low… Bad habit, don’t smoke! Sicily? Yeah, maybe. Northern Italy with fog, but always much tomato on pasta.

        Well, before upload the file I opened it with Word to delete useless row like OpenH264Codec, so this maybe explains all. I’m aware of the risk and I also remember you cited in the past about 70 add-ons, so after reading your report I immediately thought of Quantum cleaver consequence.
        This time it’s not only about habits but also productivity and functionality; if there is no add-on valid alternative is a problem. Yesterday RSS feeds, today it’s the time of bookmarks descriptions (sometimes I use it). I’m starting to feel that Firefox developers paddle upstream yours truly. I need some month to evaluate how things evolve with not compatible add-ons after the impending chanche. In the meantime:
        – it’s time that Kaspersky do his job (but no dangerous surfing habits) and I also have an antilogger; there is Sandiboxie option too.
        – if you have seen ‘Open with’ add-on means I can use another browser for safe online banking; usually I use it with -no remote to open light add-ons profile for compatibility.
        I always updated immediately all important software and still prefer Firefox over forks, but I’m pretty sure I wrote that before Firefox I use its add-ons, this make the main difference compared to the other browsers. And I really don’t want to re-install Chrome. Maybe Vivaldi if I will have to change all.
        Happy with this brainstorm, I marked Cookiebro and Feebro for the future.

  29. klaas said on July 26, 2018 at 9:36 am
    Reply

    QuiteRSS is a good RSS reader. Using social media to read the news? No thanks, not interested in having Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, and the likes decide for me what I read.
    Besides, social media is not designed for regular news and analysis.

  30. haha said on July 26, 2018 at 9:21 am
    Reply

    Luckily i don’t use firefox for rss feeds…

  31. Emil said on July 26, 2018 at 8:16 am
    Reply

    If they shut down the FF browser now because most ppl aren’t using it anywayy, they can still get a comfortable retirement from whats left in the coffers.

  32. ssdf said on July 26, 2018 at 6:49 am
    Reply

    I use both Feedly and Firefox Live Bookmarks. And they are not the same!.

    Live Bookmarks is all about simplicity!. With just one small action i could check any update on all the 27 sites i subscribed to, hundreds of new feed with one small action!, no need to load a whole new page with all of that fancy design. I just need the information and Live Bookmarks done it perfectly with no useless crap!.

    Damn you Mozilla!. I hope there’s actually an addon that are better than this.

    Sigh!. Firefox really trying to becoming chrome…..

    1. Anonymous said on July 27, 2018 at 5:47 pm
      Reply

      Inoreader is better than Feedly!

  33. jupe said on July 26, 2018 at 5:45 am
    Reply

    So it won’t even parse the xml and display it anymore either?

  34. stefann said on July 26, 2018 at 5:26 am
    Reply

    I have never used it…so i don’t care !

  35. Anonymous said on July 26, 2018 at 5:21 am
    Reply

    I hope that they can keep the RSS subscribe button for easy discovery of RSS feeds. Everything else is probably done better in a dedicated RSS reader, but that button you really can’t replace.

    And well, you don’t really need the code for parsing the RSS feed for that. All it needs to do, is scan the HTML code for it declaring an RSS feed.
    They couldn’t show a preview of the feed like they currently do, and if a user doesn’t have an RSS reader installed, you’d have to tell them to install an RSS reader when they click that button, but overall it should still be in an acceptable state without RSS parsing.

    1. John Fenderson said on July 27, 2018 at 7:18 pm
      Reply

      “I hope that they can keep the RSS subscribe button for easy discovery of RSS feeds”

      Although this is the result of bad web sites rather than bad browsers, it is pretty common for browsers to be unable to recognize that a site has an associated RSS feed. If you’re relying on that RSS button to tip you off that a feed is available, you’re missing some feeds that are available.

      I don’t actually know of a good way to work around this. My personal solution is not one that would work for everybody — if there’s a site that I want the RSS feed for, and there’s no RSS button for it in the browser, I look that the web page’s source directly. I can often find the URL for the RSS feed in there, even when the browser can’t.

  36. Clairvaux said on July 26, 2018 at 4:41 am
    Reply

    RSS is great. I use Quite RSS, which I don’t find fantastic, just barely suitable. The alternative is obviously Twitter, but what if you’re a Twitter-o-phobe and Facebook-hater, which I am ? Facebook is fascist. Twitter a bit less so, but their user interface is awful to use.

    1. Anderson Nascimento Nunes said on July 27, 2018 at 11:41 pm
      Reply

      What I do is convert html pages to feeds. That way I can get the content of these sites in the interface I prefer.

  37. Anonymous said on July 26, 2018 at 4:32 am
    Reply

    I’ve been using Feedbro for RSS. It has a useful feature of automatically finding RSS feeds on whatever page is open in the browser. I use it mostly for Youtube channel subscriptions so there’s no need to login to Youtube. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/feedbroreader/

    1. Clairvaux said on July 26, 2018 at 1:56 pm
      Reply

      Just tried Feedbro. It’s better than the other RSS extension I have tried, which was ridiculous next to Quite RSS.

      I’m exploring. However, three issues yet :

      – The interface has a blurry “image” look to it, even when text is concerned.

      – The list views take way too much space on the screen. Quite RSS crams much more information on the same area. Yeah, it’s not as pretty, but pretty comes second.

      – You can’t have sub-folders, apparently. I have quite a few in my feed hierarchy.

      And there goes again one of the main problems of a browser relying on extensions for core features : extension developers set the bar much lower than full-fledged publishers. Overlooking sub-folders in a file explorer is a shootable offence. Extension developers get away with it, and you’re supposed to be thankful on top of that, because the darn thing is free.

      What other glaring mistakes lie in wait in Feedbro ? I don’t know. You have to wait and pray.

      Another problem with extensions is data backup. Some extensions, such as RSS readers, accumulate precious data as times go by. It’s easier to have a backup and restore strategy on an standalone program. Some extensions will dump their data in the huge, untractable blob of your user profile, and trying to sort it out is a mess.

  38. Jacb said on July 26, 2018 at 3:57 am
    Reply

    A good alternative is QuiteRSS.

  39. Jojo said on July 26, 2018 at 3:43 am
    Reply

    Don’t need anything from FF. I use ‘RSS Icon in url bar’ to show feeds to subscribe to there and use Inoreader for RSS.

    The reason most people don’t use RSS is that they don’t know about it or don’t know how to use it and there is nobody to champion the technology.

    If people did understand how to use it, more would certainly take advantage.

    Someone needs to promote how-to videos for RSS use!

    1. Anonymous said on July 30, 2018 at 1:20 pm
      Reply

      Jojo said on July 26, 2018 at 3:43 am
      Reply

      Don’t need anything from FF. I use ‘RSS Icon in url bar’ to show feeds to subscribe to there and use Inoreader for RSS.

      Now in Nightly 63 it doesn’t work

    2. owl said on July 26, 2018 at 11:29 am
      Reply

      I agree!
      In ‘Japan’ here, the person who knows RSS is overwhelmingly minority, and those who know usage are ‘rare’ existence.
      User’s values ​​change depending on the smartphone and SNS, and no one is interested in things that require troublesome skills.

      Similar issues were also discussed on the Community at Brave (Browser).
      ‘Now the end user is an all-in-one feature that works lightly, requires skill-free things, can not even understand how to use the [F11] key (full screen mode function), (unintentionally, If it becomes full screen) I do not know how to enable / disable! I do not need this kind of function! What?

      The circumstances of the world are changing. As technology evolves, people are degenerating (As well as ‘monkey’ playing with tools).
      Although deplorable, ‘If there is no demand’, Mozilla’s view is reasonable from the business management point of view.

  40. Honorable Anonymous Coward said on July 26, 2018 at 3:19 am
    Reply

    Since web browsers are de facto the most secure and privacy-focused user agents for WWW currently, any other standalone Rss readers not based on FF are excluded from my consideration.
    Srry for my poor English and tell me why if I’m wrong. :-)

    1. John Fenderson said on July 27, 2018 at 6:20 pm
      Reply

      @Honorable Anonymous Coward

      I think you may be confusing RSS with the web. RSS feeds are often used to provide another way to find the contents of a web site, but it is a distinct technology that is used for lots of things that are totally unrelated to the web. RSS doesn’t even use HTML.

    2. Tom Hawack said on July 26, 2018 at 2:41 pm
      Reply

      I guess it depends of the browser and of the OS.
      Indeed I prefer to connect to a Website via Firefox than via Windows’ IE engine, but I’m not sure I’d prefer connecting via Google’s Chrome browser than via a Linux OS…

      As for your English I’d agree with mike’s comment if it weren’t the missing O in “Srry” :=)

    3. mike said on July 26, 2018 at 2:30 pm
      Reply

      I have a degree in English and I can tell you, your English is fine, far better in fact than most English people.

  41. owl said on July 26, 2018 at 2:30 am
    Reply

    The subscription to “RSS feed” is very useful, because it can efficiently collect specific information such as application update information.
    The Reader has experience using Thunderbird, FeedDemon (End of Support: Discontinued / Deleted), Feedly, Firefox (Live Bookmark), FeedReader (Free Version), but now it is in the “QuiteRSS” desktop application It converged. To so much, it is excellent in every aspect.
    I think Mozilla’s recognition is reasonable.

  42. yogaisevil said on July 26, 2018 at 2:19 am
    Reply

    Seems like the whole ordeal on designing a easily recognizable icon for RSS feeds and having other browser venders agree on the design was just a few years. That was 2004… crazy.

  43. ddk said on July 26, 2018 at 12:05 am
    Reply

    Social media usage might be responsible for decisions to drop RSS.
    Takes away more choice from users how they get information & those wanting news/current events are given curated sources decided by FB & Twitter.

    As a side note, the circus known as election season is coming to the US (midterm) and what a coincidence that FB will no longer bother to screen out “fake news” as they probably raked in billions off it during the last election….let the games begin.

  44. Nodetics said on July 25, 2018 at 11:57 pm
    Reply

    Check out Feedbro RSS feed reader for Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/feedbroreader/

    1. Anonymous said on July 26, 2018 at 12:41 pm
      Reply

      Using Brief feels lot better https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/brief/

      One-click icon for subscribe, one click to see interface.

  45. Å ime Vidas said on July 25, 2018 at 11:03 pm
    Reply

    I may soon be in need of a good Firefox add-on for surfacing a website’s RSS feeds 😅

    1. manouche said on July 26, 2018 at 10:29 am
      Reply

      I am using Brief RSS reader (Version 2.5.8) WebExtension

      https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/brief/

      For the latest development check

      https://github.com/brief-rss/brief

  46. ShintoPlasm said on July 25, 2018 at 10:49 pm
    Reply

    Mozilla are a huge bunch of tw*ts.

  47. gh said on July 25, 2018 at 10:47 pm
    Reply

    The opensource RSS reader “QuiteRSS” is cross-platform (at least windows + linux) and provides an option to view RSS content in a pane (a firefox browser instance). It supports rule-based filtering in addition to categorization, providing a superior experience, IMO, compared to using the ff LiveBookmarks toolbar/sidebar.

  48. AnonPlus said on July 25, 2018 at 10:41 pm
    Reply

    99% of users now have more than one device, so offline RSS readers are unpopular. It is more convenient to store RSS in the cloud (perhaps in your own personal cloud) and read through a separate client from PC and mobile device.

  49. Don said on July 25, 2018 at 10:33 pm
    Reply

    I didn’t see much reason for Live Bookmarks from the beginning. A regular RSS reader is really needed for perusing RSS.

  50. Anonymous said on July 25, 2018 at 10:19 pm
    Reply

    :(

  51. Fox said on July 25, 2018 at 10:08 pm
    Reply

    Not as much as when Google killed Google Reader but yeah
    I use an online RSS Reader with many subscriptions but I like to have few subscriptions in Firefox
    I will need to use Firefox esr like you mentioned or install an RSS add-on for that now.

  52. Mike Harris said on July 25, 2018 at 9:50 pm
    Reply

    “After careful consideration of various options (which also included doing nothing, or investing heavily in updating the code), we’ve decided to go ahead and remove browsing support from Firefox.”

    Mozilla analyzed usage of the functionality, the technical implementation and state, maintenance costs, and state of traditional browsing usage on the web.

    The organization discovered that browsing support “had an outsized maintenance and security impact relative to its usage”. Improving the browser and test scenarios would “cost significant time and effort”, and current usage of “the browser doesn’t justify such an investment”.

    The browser is not “offering features users want” according to Mozilla

    Mozilla discovered that the vast majority of Internet users, 86.55% according to the organization, don’t use Firefox’s browsing functionality at all. Additionally, Mozilla notes, that browser usage has been in decline and support has been dropped by companies.

    1. Clairvaux said on July 26, 2018 at 6:09 pm
      Reply

      Nominated for the Geeks’s Onion.

      1. Grumpy said on April 20, 2019 at 6:17 am
        Reply

        +1

  53. Richard Allen said on July 25, 2018 at 9:37 pm
    Reply

    Personally, I don’t care. The last year or so I got to where I’ve been adding feeds directly in Feedly and I don’t use live bookmarks.

  54. Anonymous said on July 25, 2018 at 9:34 pm
    Reply

    “had an outsized maintenance and security impact relative to their usage”, “have cost significant time and effort”, “these features doesn’t justify such an investment”…

    “Are you impacted by the removal?” > I’m impacted but apparently not as much as MozCo. Sentences that will sound like a Refrain soon.

  55. Apparition said on July 25, 2018 at 9:30 pm
    Reply

    It’s sad, but they have a point. I know very, very few people that still use RSS. Most just use Facebook or Twitter and essentially use that as as their news feed.

    Personally, I have a Feedbin subscription and will continue using that until RSS dies altogether.

    1. John Fenderson said on July 26, 2018 at 5:02 pm
      Reply

      “until RSS dies altogether”

      That day is a long way off. There really is no reasonable replacement for RSS yet.

  56. Harro Glööckler said on July 25, 2018 at 9:27 pm
    Reply

    Nice…first igoogle (i know ighome and other alternatives, they’re slow as s***), now live bookmarks. I have 15 sites where i just check for new rss updates and then i visit it or not. No way i’ll check them one by one multiple times per day.

    1. Anonymous said on July 26, 2018 at 11:33 am
      Reply

      So install an RSS reader app and have it open articles in Firefox when you want to read them. I’ve always dealt with feeds this way.

      It’s always a little upsetting to have to change your workflow, I know.

  57. Homme-Nuage said on July 25, 2018 at 9:12 pm
    Reply

    A reasonable decision. Social Networks have made RSS feeds much less important, and Firefox RSS reader was not very good.

    1. John Fenderson said on July 26, 2018 at 5:01 pm
      Reply

      RSS feeds don’t have the prominence that they used to, but they’re still widely used nonetheless. I think the bigger issue is your last phrase — using a browser as a feed reader isn’t a good experience (with any browser that I’ve tried). Most people I know (including myself) who use RSS do so using a standalone reader rather than a browser.

    2. zakius said on July 26, 2018 at 3:25 pm
      Reply

      how social networks providing you with assorted bag of everything are supposed to replace properly organized reader?

  58. slumbergod said on July 25, 2018 at 8:43 pm
    Reply

    Mozilla continue’s to alienate more of its traditional user base while insisting “it’s what our users want”…

    1. Grumpy said on February 9, 2019 at 11:53 pm
      Reply

      Mozilla doesn’t care what it’s users want and them elminating features is just to cover up the fact that they no lomger have the technical expertise to support a feature. Testing the quantum version convinced me firefox is dead as high tech browser.

      1. not grumpy said on April 18, 2019 at 8:45 pm
        Reply

        really? I love it when people make these claims because a product does work the way they want it to. Mozilla is the leader in providing a secure, easy to use browser that helps bring security to the forefront of basic user’s minds. Most people do not use RSS feeds. Its just the way it goes.

      2. Grumpy said on April 19, 2019 at 10:33 pm
        Reply

        @not grumpy

        I was going to reply but @Clairvaux nailed it.

      3. Clairvaux said on April 19, 2019 at 1:50 pm
        Reply

        @ Not grumpy

        I love it when people say a feature should be taken away because they themselves don’t use it.

        Newsflash to you : most people don’t use the vast majority of features in any software, tool, machine, equipment, etc.

        Great software have a heck of a lot of features, because the point of great software is precisely to offer any user the features that he might himself need one day. And since different people have different needs…

        If Excel, or Word, were not chock-full of features close to 100 % of people never use, they wouldn’t have reached the quasi-monopoly status they have today. They even have features that nobody in their right mind would use to create a document today, but which are there for backward compatibility. Have you ever heard of this concept ?

        Also, “people making claims” that a software developer is bad, “because a product does not work the way they want it to”, is called commerce, business, the way economy works. That’s called offer and demand. That’s called free markets. Ever heard of that, in your socialist bubble ?

        It’s because free markets exist that we get great software. Not because some fascist-communist do-gooders at Mozilla (or other places) lord it over their users, and tell them what they should want and what they actually need.

        Ghacks readers don’t come here to be fed marketing slogans such as “Mozilla is the leader in providing a secure, easy to use browser that helps bring security to the forefront of basic user’s minds.” If you want to feed on them, good to you.

        Just don’t tell others they don’t need what they want, or they should be satisfied with a product when they are not.

        You have just illustrated perfectly what is deeply wrong with the Mozilla mentality, and with the mentality of its fanboys. Give me anytime a paid-for browser, developed by a big bad capitalist company out to make a profit and kill polar bears, rather than this disgusting Soviet tool which come attached with its NKVD shills.

      4. owl said on April 19, 2019 at 8:27 am
        Reply

        > Most people do not use RSS feeds. Its just the way it goes.

        +1 vote ( I agree! )
        By the way, very few people, including me, need “RSS”. I recommend the extension “Feedbro” for such people.
        Advanced Feed Reader – Read news & blogs or any RSS/Atom/RDF source.
        https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/feedbroreader/
        Add-on Links Homepage https://nodetics.com/feedbro

        As a full-fledged ones, there is a desktop application “QuiteRSS”.
        https://quiterss.org/
        Features that are no longer in demand for end users should be left to extensions or dedicated desktop apps.

        Others (information that would be helpful):
        https://www.ghacks.net/2019/04/05/feed-preview-for-firefox/

    2. lmfo said on December 11, 2018 at 8:31 pm
      Reply

      It’s almost like you can re-download these removed features as add-ons.

      1. Fred H Olson said on December 28, 2018 at 12:33 pm
        Reply

        “There are several extensions for Firefox”
        https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/feed-reader-replacements-firefox

    3. oldfox said on July 27, 2018 at 12:55 am
      Reply

      I’ve used Firefox for almost a decade now and I think this change makes sense. If 99.9% of users never use these features and they’re complex to manage and keep secure then the features belong in add-on land.

    4. Anonymous said on July 26, 2018 at 4:55 am
      Reply

      They did not in any way insist that.

  59. Anonymous said on July 25, 2018 at 8:40 pm
    Reply

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