+++ Thursday 25 September 2025 +++

Reading RSS feeds on OS X Mavericks
===================================

To have some fun and to add some extra functionality to my old Macbook
Air (from 2013), running OS X Mavericks, I searched for an RSS feed
reader.

I installed NetNewsWire 3.2.12, which I downloaded from
http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/netnewswire

Google Reader
-------------
NetNewsWire supports syncing with Google Reader.
Google Reader is one of the many discontinued Google services.

Several self hosted online RSS aggregators support the Google Reader
API. The advantage is that you can use different devices when reading
your feeds, without the need for any synchronization.

Unfortunately, the connection to Google Reader is hard coded into
NetNewsWire, and it is not possible to connect to a different
aggregator.

RSS feeds and the smol web
--------------------------
RSS feeds are important to keep the smol web alive.

The smol web can mean different things, here I use the term to
describe that part of the word wide web that contains the independent
websites crafted by human beings, with human created content,
non-corporate and without trackers or other surveillance marketing
methods.

Firstly, the big internet search engines have stopped indexing the
websites that make up the smol net. Nowadays they index sites like
Reddit. It has become very hard to discover smol web websites.

When you manage to discover an interesting smol web website, the best
thing you can do is to add its feed to your feed reader. With this
you help yourself as well as the creator of this website.

Next, many smol web sites usually don't publish daily new content, but
at a more leisurely frequency. Without a RSS feed reader, the
continues river of new content makes it hard to keep up with these web
sites.

OPML file
---------
NetNewsWire offers the great option to import OPML files.

I publish an OPML file on my website, you can find it here:
http://box.matto.nl/links.opml

Every time I add a website to my links-page, I look for the feed.
When available, I add it to the GNU Recutils file. A script uses the
recutils tools to create a new version for the links page and the OPML
file. With the links page and the OPML file I hope to help in the
discovery of smol web websites.

After installing NetNewsWire I imported this OPML file to quickly
get started.

Inaccessible feeds
------------------
Just a few feeds from the OPML file are accessible. Most feeds are
only available using an encrypted https connection.

Encrypted https connections are of course always a problem when using
an older operating system. Older hardware is very often still capable
enough for many day to day tasks, but is sadly made obsolete by the
requirements of encrypted connections.

If you run a smol web website, the best thing you can do is to make it
not only available from a encrypted https connection, but also from an
unencrypted http connection.
The second best thing you can do, is to make your RSS feed available
from an unencrypted http connection and make sure that it is a
complete feed, with not only a title and a link, but with the complete
content of the web page.

If your website doesn't publish an RSS feed, creating one should be
a priority.

Let's keep the smol web alive!


Last edited: $Date: 2025/09/25 16:02:32 $