Where is the RSS Feed Icon in Firefox 4?

November 29, 2010 Category

If you have tried out the latest beta of the Firefox 4, you probably have noticed that the RSS web feeds subscription button which is present within the location bar of previous versions of Firefox is missing.

The reason given was:

Even among our very advanced users, this button has the lowest percentage use of all our buttons, and is not used anywhere near enough to justify being in the main UI. – Alexander Limi

It is really an irony for me because it is one of the buttons which I use the most.

The new design of this button is of a great drawback for me because, It uses extra space and it is present in the toolbar at all times, even when not needed. The enable and disable of the new button to detect the RSS feed in a page is not that much user friendly too.

Since Firefox 4 Beta 7 was the first release after the codebase went through feature freeze, it is unlikely that they will change this in the near future.

How to add the button to the tool bar?

By default the new RSS web feeds subscription button is not visible. To add this to the toolbar ( or navigation tool-bar as it is called in Firefox 4 ) just right-click on the toolbar and select customize. In the customize tool bar window that appears, click and drag the “Subscribe” icon to the desired location. Done.

What do you think about this new change? Do you use feed button that often?

Find out How To restore the RSS Feed Icon in Firefox 4

Browsers, Design, Firefox, Tip, Web Browser

http://www.ideasbubble.com Peter J
I don’t use the feed button much as I’m more tempted to click on the feed button on a website or blog that they have.
I agree that moving the rss button was a bit stupid but its not a hard thing to fix.

http://technophilia.madharasan.com/ Jayarathina Madharasan
Hi Peter,
Thanks for your comment.
I not only use that button for subscribing but also to detect RSS feed on websites. Because not all sites display their RSS feed icon on every page. Some times its hard to find the RSS feed button in websites. They display it in small size, so small that it makes me to think that they don’t want me to subscribe.

Anonymous
This is an odd decision – this button was extremely helpful, allowing to use the feed without having to pixel-hunt for it all over the page. And some pages (CMS-based blogs with custom themes, especially) don’t have an RSS button, but do have a link to their automatic feed, unknown to the page author, hidden in the page source code. Being able to use these easily was a really nice feature in FF. I hope the toolbar button does the same – thanks for the hint, as this was one of things I didn’t like about FF4b7, and I thought this was gone forever

http://technophilia.madharasan.com/ Jayarathina Madharasan
I agree with your point.
http://profiles.google.com/gargajcns Gergely Szelei
So they took a fairly unobtrusive tiny icon that’s only visible when needed, an turned it into a large ugly obtrusive one that sits there even when it’s not needed.
Great work, brainiacs.

wantabegeek
I realize this article is a couple months old now but I thought I would share my solution for the rss feed icon missing in FF4. This (I think) only works for google reader and I have been using this userscript for a few years now. Still works in FF4b10 w/W7 x64. Jasper’s Google Reader subscribe (http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/2571). This puts the icon in the far top right corner of the web page. For my use I did modify the script to drop it down about an 1/8″ because sometimes it will over lay a sign in button or something. Hope this helps!

http://technophilia.madharasan.com/ Jayarathina Madharasan
Thanks a lot. I hope it would be helpful to many.

Adfff
Use it all the time, can’t understand why it went away

http://technophilia.madharasan.com/ Jayarathina Madharasan
I am also wondering the exact same thing…

http://www.davidlam.ca/blog David Lam
I use this icon all the time too – most frequently to identify when a page has one or more feeds, but also to subscribe to feeds as well. Along with the removal of a perfectly good keyboard shortcut (Ctrl E to go to the search box), it seems that Firefox 4 really took a lot of backward steps in terms of usability.

Lutshow
I ‘ve been using ctrl+k for a long time now!

Anonymous
Bummer, but I can totally see why they removed it, since a lot of users don’t even know what an RSS feed is (although having that button on there might have educated/inspired the curious types).
The nice thing is, you can bring it back! I just installed the RSS icon add-on ( https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/rss-icon/ ) and it’s back in the bar where I need it! (New “ooo shiny” look, too!)
http://www.websign.pl websign
Maybe that’s the reason why Firefox is so quick? Remove everything that is not extremely needed to browse web pages and tell everybody that Firefox become quick? Strange thing for me is also lack of titles even when I take tabs below search bar.
Claudio
Hi,
Just right click on the address bar and choose customize; bring it back close to your address bar; no add-on required.

http://technophilia.madharasan.com/ Jayarathina Madharasan
That is what I did. But that is not as cool as it used to be. Isn’t it?

http://profiles.google.com/kathryn.hall Kathryn Hall
THANK YOU. I used that button non-stop, too.
thatgaljill
Thanks so much for posting this! I can’t imagine that it’s so rarely used as I use it all. the. time!
http://carlosmalpacheco.blogspot.com/ Carlos Mal
I just assumed that all webpages I wanted to subscribe to didn’t have a feed. Thanks for the advice, you just made my life a little better.

http://technophilia.madharasan.com/ Jayarathina Madharasan
You are welcome…

Pheidias
Exactly! What idiots! That’s the very button I use to subscribe (I use Google Reader), the very flag in the first place to see if there is an rss at all! What idiots concluded that it is useless? Even if we don’t subscrive often, it is useful to know without searching that we can to! So to speak, when the page had https, why is it going blue? When it has rss it becomes orange! This is the very knowledge of every person using web!
In fact, I’ve reached this page here, after searching what happened with my site and why my rss stopped working! (That’s what I was afraid of, not seeing orange at the address bar!)
Losheng
That was one of the main reasons I used Firefox! And the reason that I ended up on this page!

http://technophilia.madharasan.com/ Jayarathina Madharasan
I hope How To restore the RSS Feed Icon in Firefox 4 solved your problem.

Joaquin Gasa
U saved my life Thanks
Joaquin Gasa
U saved my life Thanks

http://technophilia.madharasan.com/ Jayarathina Madharasan
You are welcome…

Rod
Stupid reason … I always use the RSS icon from the URL bar when I want to subscribe to a web
Elsa Westerlund
i also use it all the time so I was confused when it disapperad. but thanks for helping me figure out how to put it back!
A312464
odd firefox decision, I was getting fed up of suscribing directly through the reader. Thanks!
Xian
Seriously. I’m missing so many things with this new Firefox that I started getting a Facebook feel in that crap changed drastically all of a sudden and without warning or ability to choose a previous layout. I’m sure I’ll get used to it all but thanks for solving one mystery.
Now off to find out why my FoxyTunes toolbar is nowhere to be found.
Nigelbiggs2007
Well YES! I agree with you. What a set of plonkers! I need to know whether the website has an rss feed, cos I work in SEO?!
Guest
To make the icon less obtrusive, you can throw it in the tabs toolbar or the add-on toolbar, if you use it.

http://technophilia.madharasan.com/ Jayarathina Madharasan
A nice tip. Thanks for sharing.

Chrisina
I wish it hadn’t gone away. Thanks for the tip on how to (sort of) get it back.
Per Karlsson
I want it back!
Yasmin Draegonne
Whew! I haven’t really been using RSS feeds much but am now finding it’s become more critical to keep updated. Thanks for the tip!
Manuelmagic
Thanks a lot!
http://twitter.com/ww7_network WW7 Network
I always use it, and it was better beore in the url bar
http://twitter.com/soundasleep Jevon Wright
Agreed. A surprising and disappointing change.
focusonthebeer.com
oh my god, you saved my life
http://twitter.com/GnosisArts Gnosis Arts
Yeah removing this was really dumb. I used that icon all the time too
rayvtirx
thanks for this
i have missed the feed icon for ages , and didnt notice it in the customisation box before
they could at least make it go orange or something when theres a feed available
http://www.jackspirko.com/ Jack Spirko
This just pisses me off, WTF is wrong with those guys? It took effort to remove something that worked and was in place and for what possible reason. It wasn’t used that much? Dumb ass jackasses.
Anonymous
I really liked that, thanks for the tip to how to restore it!

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