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How do I subscribe to a blog's RSS feed with Firefox?

This might be the last idiotic question you'll see for the next twelve months, but I still find myself bookmarking weblogs so i can go back and read them again. I have an RSS reader configured, but don't know how to subscribe to blogs. I use Firefox: is there a shortcut?


Dave's Answer:

This is not an idiotic question at all. In fact, I'll boldly venture to guess that at least 20% of the people who read this article aren't sure of the fastest, easiest way to subscribe to a weblog or other site that has an RSS feed available while using the popular Firefox Web browser.

Allow me to enlighten you! :-)

The beauty of Firefox and other modern Web browsers is that they do what we geeks call RSS autodiscovery, which means that when you go to a Web page that has an associated RSS feed, your browser automatically knows it.

I use Firefox, for example, and when I'm on a page that doesn't have an RSS feed available, here's what I see in the address bar:

firefox address bar no rss

Go to a site that has a discoverable RSS feed, however, and notice that there's a new icon that shows up in the bar:

firefox address bar rss

I'll go to my friend Doyle Albee's Media in the New Millennium weblog to show what happens when I click on the little RSS icon. First off, here's the address bar for his weblog:

firefox address bar metzger rss

Click on the RSS icon (I've highlighted it here in red so we're talking about the same thing) and here's what you see:

firefox subscribe rss choice

Since I use Google Reader, I click on that button and that's all there is to it, I'm now subscribed to the weblog in my favorite reader!

If your Firefox isn't yet configured for your favorite RSS reader, you can adjust it by going to Preferences --> Applications and scrolling down to "Web Feed". Mine looks like this:

firefox preferences applications web feed

What isn't immediately obvious is that if you click on the right-side value you get a nifty pop-up of choices:

firefox preferences applications web feed choices

That's where you can pick the reader you prefer and have it all hooked up properly. Now you've got a super-fast way to subscribe to RSS feeds as you travel the Web. Hope that's helpful!


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Categorized: Blogs and Blogging   (Article 8616, Written by )
Tagged: firefox, google reader, rss feed, shared rss reader
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Reader Comments To Date: 1

Denise said, on April 6, 2010 4:55 PM:

Thank goodness for you. This was driving me crazy and took me a couple of hours to ask the question the right way to figure this out. Way to go. Even my son, who is an IT professional (albeit on a Mac) didn't know.

Starbucks coffee cup I do have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but first I'd like to say thank you, Dave, for all your helpful information by buying you a cup of coffee!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!











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