Alas: that useful feature is no more. Beginning with the release of Firefox version 4 on 22 March 2011, there is no longer any visual cue whatsoever because there is no longer any RSS icon at all.
Or is there? Yes, in fact, there is: it is just well hidden. To display it, simply click on "View | Toolbars | Customize..." menus and find the "Subscribe" button with the RSS icon. Simply drag the button to the toolbar of your choice.
Voilà! Unlike before, the RSS logo will always be present. Now, however, the "Subscribe" button becomes an active link with bold black print in the presence of an RSS feed site. Conversely, the button becomes an inactive link with faded gray print in the absence of an RSS feed. Not quite as prominent a visual cue as the original, but it will suffice; it is certainly better than nothing.
It still irks me that users must discover this solution on their own and then implement it. This is especially puzzling in light of the fact that Mozilla's own SeaMonkey browser still retains the original feature of the RSS icon in the URL field. It took me over a year before I stumbled upon the new Firefox alternative, and then thanks only to this helpful web site.
I did personally reap an immediate benefit from this discovery. It so happens that in order to view the RSS icon on my local school district's web site, Firefox users must:
- allow font@http://themes.googleusercontent.com (based on JavaScript) *AND*
- allow system colors *AND*
- allow images
By default, I have all three of those features disabled in Firefox. I disable JavaScript as a security measure; I apply my own soothing color scheme to avoid migraine headaches caused by the garishly bright color schemes present on most web sites; and I disable images to avoid an avalanche of unwanted advertisement eyesores.
As a result, I never saw the RSS icon on my school district's quirky web site and was therefore completely unaware that the site even had RSS capability — that is, until I installed the "Subscribe" button on my "Bookmarks Toolbar" in the manner described above. Lo and behold: the bold black "Subscribe" link drew my attention and alerted me to the presence of RSS.
Yippie kay yay! My hunger for RSS feeds is once again satiated.
According to Google statistics, this post has had 100 or more visitors - but not one single comment! In fact, out of 46 blogs posted since April 2010 with a total of over 400 reported viewings, this is only the second total comment. [And the first was also my own comment to myself just to verify that the comment feature did work.]
ReplyDeleteBy contrast, those same 46 posts have drawn 35 comments on Wordpress, including - inexplicably - 20 comments on this very same posting. Why are Wordpress readers so engaged while Google readers appear so passive? Perhaps the closing comment by the female office worker in the Butterfinger candy bar TV commercial applies here as well.