Automator workflow of the month: Bring RSS back to Safari 6

#1 Macworld

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Posted 26 July 2012 - 04:31 AM

Post your comments for Automator workflow of the month: Bring RSS back to Safari 6 here

#2 ClydeTurnerBain

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Posted 26 July 2012 - 05:01 AM

Just as I learn how to use RSS in Safari, it's not going to be there when/if I upgrade to Mt. Lion? I use Mail's RSS service and like that I do not have to open Safari, go to a website and then utilize the RSS. It would be great if Safari had an RSS button to click and display all the RSS I subscribe to. I would prefer to return Mail to just email and have another window display a listing of my RSS feeds. I like having all the feeds listed on a page rather than having to go around to 80 websites to peruse what to read what to discard what to keep. Quick scan the titles. Is Mail in Mt. Lion keeping the RSS inboxes? Besides being the best format for receiving and sending mail that I have found, the RSS is also a major feature to me.

#3 Wint

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Posted 26 July 2012 - 05:23 AM

ClydeTurnerBain, on 26 July 2012 - 05:01 AM, said:

I believe RSS is gone from Mail as well. I would highly recommend using Google Reader for your RSS aggregator, and checking out the Reeder app for Mac. It's a fantastic program for browsing RSS feeds.

#4 marilynat107

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Posted 26 July 2012 - 10:23 AM

Wint, on 26 July 2012 - 05:23 AM, said:

ClydeTurnerBain, on 26 July 2012 - 05:01 AM, said:

Mail still has RSS. I added two RSS feeds to Mail after updating to Safari 6 yesterday.

#5 Chris Breen

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Posted 26 July 2012 - 10:27 AM

marilynat107, on 26 July 2012 - 10:23 AM, said:

Mail still has RSS. I added two RSS feeds to Mail after updating to Safari 6 yesterday.

Are you running Lion or Mountain Lion? RSS isn't supported in Mountain Lion's Mail.

#6 jbman73175

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Posted 26 July 2012 - 12:07 PM

Or just install Firefox and then LiveClick Beta.

#7 kosh

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Posted 27 July 2012 - 03:58 PM

How about the RSS Visualizer screensaver? Does that still work?

#8 ACMT_Fred

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Posted 28 July 2012 - 06:22 PM

kosh, on 27 July 2012 - 03:58 PM, said:

How about the RSS Visualizer screensaver? Does that still work?

No. It is completely absent from the list of available screensavers.

#9 supereric

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Posted 30 July 2012 - 07:47 AM

So bummed that my RSS feeds in Mail have disappeared. Chris, I would love an article, even if it's speculation or commentary, about why Apple doesn't want to support RSS in Safari or Mail.

#10 ChrisCalzone

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Posted 30 July 2012 - 08:52 AM

ACMT_Fred, on 28 July 2012 - 06:22 PM, said:

kosh, on 27 July 2012 - 03:58 PM, said:

How about the RSS Visualizer screensaver? Does that still work?

No. It is completely absent from the list of available screensavers.

(1) Screensaver
This is really a terrible omission. They killed off MobileMe galleries (yet the iOS apps still persist, uselessly, on my iPad and iPhone). And now they kill of the ability to stream photos as a screensaver. I know steaming photos has been an extremely popular screensaver so I can't imagine why Apple killed this. After they killed MobileMe, the only way to stream photos was to use the RSS Visualizer to stream a Yahoo Pipes Flickr feed of your photostream. Now, you can't even do that.

(2) RSS Reader
As for RSS in general. I appreciate the automator suggestion, but it doesn't do the same job that reading RSS in Mail did. It requires manually seeking out updates and if you have a lot, will overwhelm you and it's hard to quickly or simply sift through the collection of articles to toss out the ones you don't care for and whittle it down to the handful you do want to read.

RSS in Mail was a great way to stay up to date with a handful of feeds. It was extremely simple and sparse. You would get the feeds, teasers, and a link to open the page in Safari (in front or behind Mail) if you wanted to read more. There was no clutter and no toolbar or extraneous UI to deal with. It was just there and just worked and was running all day long, just like Mail and Chat. It was a great way to stay up to date throughout the day. It was not distracting enough to prevent you from getting work done, but it was inline and accessible enough to your daily workflow that you could easily see when new stuff to read was available --without having to manually request it-- and easy enough to mark as read items that didn't interest you in a fraction of a second.

For some people, this wasn't enough obviously, and a dedicated reader app was the way to go. But for many of us, it was absolutely perfect and we now find ourselves with the prospect of going without RSS, or having to keep a dedicated app running, with it's window and chrome, perhaps in its own space or otherwise cluttering our desktop and attention. Worse, with a dedicated app, there are all sorts of "power user" options related to RSS that are totally unnecessary, or which threaten my privacy by requiring me to link them to google reader. I don't need or want google RSS.... I don't want an RSS app that does more... I want one that does the bare minimum.

The cherry on top: it's impossible to compare and evaluate the options without spending a ton of money. RSS readers are outrageously expensive for what they do and there are a ton of them.

I've settled on Vienna for the time being. It's open source and very simple. Almost as good as Mail was. Unfortunately, it has UI bugs/quirks and won't go fullscreen. I'm hoping either someone updates it to bring it to the Lion/Mountain Lion age, or someone reads this and has a persuasive suggestion for an alternative.

#11 TimothyA

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Posted 30 July 2012 - 07:23 PM

Did Apple ever explain their rationale for removing RSS? I hate it when a new version of something removes rather than adds features, and Apple does it a lot.

#12 Scott76

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Posted 01 August 2012 - 05:13 AM

I am using Reeder on the Mac and iPad. It uses Google Reader to manage the RSS links, it keeps the RSS links in sync between devices. Yes, I know Google is evil, but Reeder puts an interface over the RSS feeds that is easier to deal with!

#13 skippingrock

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Posted 01 August 2012 - 04:12 PM

ACMT_Fred, on 28 July 2012 - 06:22 PM, said:

kosh, on 27 July 2012 - 03:58 PM, said:

How about the RSS Visualizer screensaver? Does that still work?

No. It is completely absent from the list of available screensavers.

I found the RSS screensaver still works if you reinstall it from a copy of Lion. Should be under:
/System/Library/Screen Savers/RSS Visualizer.qtz

Stick it in:
~/Library/Screen Savers/

Should work!

BTW, you can also get this nice Time Machine like RSS visualizer here:
http://www.iconpaper.org/time-machine/

Cheers, Andrew.

#14 skydivertak

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Posted 03 August 2012 - 06:21 AM

Is it possible that this was not intentional, but a quick security fix? 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...e=CVE-2012-0678

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