Moziila didn’t have the resources to keep a "subscribe to RSS" button in Firefox but has the manpower to build a full AI inside your browser.
And that’s all you need to know about the end of the web and the IA bubble.
@ploum quite honestly, The RSS button issue was a design decision. Mozilla considered that too few people used it, most likely based on actual data. For the record, I strongly disagreed with their choice of removing the button.
@lautreg @nitot : every design decision is a political one. You don’t remove feature that people don’t use (especially those as little intrusive and trivial as this one).
You remove feature that you don’t want people to use.
And, as telemetry is optional and subscribing to RSS is rare (and some, like myself, were just right-clicking to copy rss url and paste it elsewhere), I call the "user dont use it" pure BS.
@ploum @lautreg "You don’t remove feature that people don’t use". I respectfully disagree. The whole point of Firefox was to remove from what became Seamonkey features and buttons that advanced users kind of liked in order to build an unbloated piece of software. It gave simplicity and efficiency to Firefox, which was instrumental in making it a success. I still think removing the RSS button was a major mistake and a lack of vision.
I totally agree.
And it is not only bloating.
Many people think that unused features, if untouched, don't require effort. As a developer, I can guarantee that's totally, absolutely wrong.
OSs change, underlying libraries change, protocols change, security needs change. This means features already implemented require changes and testing from time to time. If you have many features, that adds up to a huge amount of time, to the point that most of your time may end up going to keeping existing features alive.
I agree that removing the RSS button was a terrible mistake, too. In fact, I think it should have been totally extended and overhauled; there are RSS clients (some are browsers) that give you a much, much better experience than Firefox did. I wasn't using it because it was very lacking, not because I didn't want it.
