Where did RSS go in Safari 6???

Call me naive, but I normally blindly update my Mac, whenever I get a software update from Apple. Why? Because of years of garnered trust. A windows machine and I would take a diferent view, but Apple they deserve my trust. At least I thought they did. How can removing functionality be an improvement in any way?

I use the RSS feature a lot in Safari. I don't want to have to go to another application to read my news.The system I had worked perfectly for my needs.

I have registered my disgust here:

Tell Apple you want the RSS feature back in Safari...

http://www.apple.com/feedback/safari.html

On a side note the large tab bars are just stupid looking.

Overall Safari 6 feels like a HUGE step backwards.

I am seriously considering getting a PC next time round. Since my upgrade to Lion my Mac has been buggy, as ****, but this may be the straw the breaks the camels back.

Correct but this thread can make a difference if you...

Use this link to tell Apple you want the RSS feature back in Safari...

http://www.apple.com/feedback/safari.html

Tell others about this thread...

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4135311

Thank you! It's been driving me batty!

With regards to webkit, when you show package contents, they are there under frameworks. I tried moving the 10.8 framework out, but it wouldn't launch. Tried swapping the 10.8 executable with the 10.7 one, it launched but nothing happens and there were no rss numbers in my bookmarks bar. I'm not a programmer, but the webkit source code is downloadable. Perhaps some Dev could make a webkit-based broswer with integrated RSS, I'd use it :-)

Use this link to tell Apple you want the RSS feature back in Safari...

http://www.apple.com/feedback/safari.html

Tell others about this thread...

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4135311

Message was edited by: marcus.sg

Aha! Found this.... dated July 25, 2012

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5400

“Description: A cross-site scripting issue existed in the handling of feed:// URLs. This update removes handling of feed:// URLs.”

http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2012-0678

This is why the feeds won't work! I imagine another update will restore it, once they have fixed the issue.

Message was edited by: skydivertak

skydivertak wrote:

Aha! Found this.... dated July 25, 2012

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5400

“Description: A cross-site scripting issue existed in the handling of feed:// URLs. This update removes handling of feed:// URLs.”

http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2012-0678

This is why the feeds won't work! I imagine another update will restore it, once they have fixed the issue.

Message was edited by: skydivertak

Bingo! This has to be it.

"Cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in Apple Safari before 6.0 allows remote attackers to inject arbitrary web script or HTML via a feed:// URL."

If you look at Mountain Lion, you can see that Apple is big on security features, with Gatekeeper, et al. So they are probably working on fixing that, and couldn't do it before the release of ML.

Apple wants to make sure they can continue to flaunt OS Xs security over Windows.

skydivertak wrote:

Aha! Found this.... dated July 25, 2012

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5400

“Description: A cross-site scripting issue existed in the handling of feed:// URLs. This update removes handling of feed:// URLs.”

http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2012-0678

This is why the feeds won't work! I imagine another update will restore it, once they have fixed the issue.

Message was edited by: skydivertak

Thanks for injecting some hope into this ackward discussion thread. That would be great if the RSS functionality returns in Safari 6.1. I guess I'll just be more productive until then, since I can't waste time on RSS feeds for now 😉

Maybe the Apple peeps involved are not lame brained, just a bit flat footed or inept if this is how they handle a security hole... "poor ole' dawg has a tick behind her ear -- where's mah shawtgun?"

Aha! Found this.... dated July 25, 2012

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5400

“Description: A cross-site scripting issue existed in the handling of feed:// URLs. This update removes handling of feed:// URLs.”

http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2012-0678

This is why the feeds won't work! I imagine another update will restore it, once they have fixed the issue.

Thanks for the new insight. Makes it more understandable. I still hope for a fix. Vienna/NNW/etc don't do it for me. You don't really miss something until it's suddenly gone..

[edited source]

There are a few other discussions regarding the loss of RSS feeds in Mail -- this one can tell you where to find an archived "list" of your old feeds:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4136268?start=0&tstart=0

It's a huge pain, but I did manage to find the addresses for all my feeds & add them to a standalone RDD reader.

Reading them in Mail was ever so much easier. 😠

Not only is Mail an illogical place to move RSS feeds, the feeds in Mail seem to bring Mail to a grinding halt. I use hundreds of feeds in Safari and I can sucessfully use about five in Mail. Try using the Internet Archives' feature film RSS feed in Mail and wait 20 minutes to get your mail. Come on Apple, if RSS feeds are a dying technology, why are they still in Mail? If the reader is a useful feature, why is it gone from it's logical home in Safari? RSS readers outside of a web browser are just a nuisance, and using the RSS reader with Search is a really handy way to collect clippings of a favorite subject from multiple sites. Everyone posting here that thinks Apple has made a big mistake in removing RSS feeds, complain at http://www.apple.com/feedback/safari.html

apeach wrote:

Not only is Mail an illogical place to move RSS feeds, the feeds in Mail seem to bring Mail to a grinding halt. I use hundreds of feeds in Safari and I can sucessfully use about five in Mail. Try using the Internet Archives' feature film RSS feed in Mail and wait 20 minutes to get your mail. Come on Apple, if RSS feeds are a dying technology, why are they still in Mail? If the reader is a useful feature, why is it gone from it's logical home in Safari? RSS readers outside of a web browser are just a nuisance, and using the RSS reader with Search is a really handy way to collect clippings of a favorite subject from multiple sites. Everyone posting here that thinks Apple has made a big mistake in removing RSS feeds, complain at http://www.apple.com/feedback/safari.html

they aren't STILL in Mail. They're gone. And so are all my RSS feeds. Poof! you must not have upgraded.

if you want an RSS feeder for Safari, there are several extensions you can download which bring that function to safari...

you can also just do it in the Mail application in it's side bar instead... (any old RSS feed link in Safari if you click on it will give you that option)

the RSS feed, like flash, slows Safari and your machine down considerably.. in the mail app they are checked when the rest of your mail accounts are checked during it's auto refresh cycle...

http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/44228/subscribe-to-feed-safari-extension

by the way, a useful hint about flash on safari, if you do download flash from adobe, keep your "acitivty monitor" application in your system tool bar, when you launch safari, and go to a webpage with a bunch of crappy flash adds, click on activity monitor, find the flash process that is running and kill it... suddenly your safari application is about 10 times more responsive for every website (that has flash adds) if you need to watch a video in flash, just relaunch Safari.. and there you have it, and then when done immediately kill the flash process again...

"activity monitor' can be found in your applications folder then under the utilities folder... (click on big stop icon after highlighting a process that is running)

apple is interested in improving the whole experience and that means removing old tech that is slowing things down, like flash and RSS, and replaceing them with new tech, if you want the old tech, Apple is just allowing those companies to write extensions, so you can get that function back. but you would be wise to try to not do that, and find the new tech...

It's true that alternatives exist.

But that doesn't mean this was well handled by Apple, at all.

First, it was without warning.

Second, someone had to actually code this message into Safari:

"Safari can't display RSS feeds. You can search the Mac App Store for an RSS app."

The link, and the app store, suggests to customers that they now have to PAY FOR a feature which they previously got with the OS they paid for!

Apple could have done several things differently. They could have included Vienna in the OS release, since it's free and open source. They could have linked to a support article, like they did with X11 - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5293 - and directed people to Vienna from there. They could have provided their own standalone RSS Reader app, if they felt it wasn't mainstream enough for Safari.

It's not too late to do any of the above in the next 10.8.x release, if Apple is listening to it's customers.

darudy wrote:

Apple could have done several things differently. They could have included Vienna in the OS release, since it's free and open source. They could have linked to a support article, like they did with X11 - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5293 - and directed people to Vienna from there. They could have provided their own standalone RSS Reader app, if they felt it wasn't mainstream enough for Safari.

It's not too late to do any of the above in the next 10.8.x release, if Apple is listening to it's customers.

I really don't care how Apple did it, what process they used or how I felt about the process. What I care about is functionality I depend on is gone. We've come to expect Apple to make things better. Here they did not, they simply IMHO decided that since there was no way to make money or control customers with RSS feeds that they were not going to support them.

One of the first engineers I worked for once told me (I know its not original), "Never blame anything on malice that can be adequately explained by stupidity." That has proven true most times, but without any explaination from Apple I cannot determine in this case if it was malice or stupidity. But I do know it was one or the other.

I have struggled with other decisions from Apple, dropping the floppy, dropping Flash, dropping CD drives, etc. But in all these cases I could see the logic and while I would have liked to keep the dropped functionality a little longer, it made sense to me for Apple to stay a leader in technology and because something better replaced it. Not the case here. There is nothing better (simpler) and some of the alternatives are full of malice.

The What's New in Safari 6 page still starts off with this text:

"Safari continues to support the latest web standards and technologies."

They should add an asterisk next to "latest" that cautions that this will only apply to Social Web technologies. Considering the millions of World Wide Web sites offering RSS content, and thousands more every week (with all new Drupal and Wordpress sites generating RSS by default)... RSS might not be the very latest web technology, but it remains a highly relevant and viable one.

Those of us who used RSS productively in Safari and OS X want it back. Here's another thoughtful article on this terrible blunder by someone at Apple, ending with the hope that RSS functionality returns soon:

Apple’s Safari 6 RSS Blunder (The Mac Observer)

If you see other well written articles like this one, please add them to this thread.

etresoft: yes, this a user-user forum not a forum to sell your app.

Don't you think users suggestions to send feedback to http://www.apple.com/feedback/ is helping? I and others sure hope so. If you don't, please stop provoke others that do hope.