[whatwg] Removing rel=feed

[Ian Hickson]

On Tue, 6 Oct 2009, Mark Pilgrim wrote:
>
> This is an email followup from an IRC discussion long ago, at Ian's request.
> 
> http://krijnhoetmer.nl/irc-logs/whatwg/20090416#l-507
> 
> # [23:30] <mpilgrim> test cases:
> http://diveintomark.org/tmp/relalternate.html and
> http://diveintomark.org/tmp/relfeed.html
> # [23:30] <mpilgrim> all modern browsers support the former (except
> google chrome, which has no feed autodiscovery at all)
> # [23:31] <mpilgrim> firefox 3 supports rel=feed
> # [23:31] <Hixie> sounds right
> # [23:31] <mpilgrim> firefox 2 does not support rel=feed
> # [23:32] <mpilgrim> opera 9.62 does not support rel=feed
> # [23:32] <mpilgrim> safari 4 beta does not support rel=feed
> # [23:32] <mpilgrim> IE8 final does not support rel=feed
> 
> http://krijnhoetmer.nl/irc-logs/whatwg/20090518#l-32
> 
> # [04:45] <mpilgrim> i've completed my rel=feed research ( c.f.
> http://krijnhoetmer.nl/irc-logs/whatwg/20090416#l-507 )
> # [04:46] <mpilgrim> i sampled 3 billion web pages from google's latest index
> # [04:46] <mpilgrim> weeding out errors like rel='RSS 2.0 feed' and
> false positives like rel='service.feed',
> # [04:46] <mpilgrim> i found exactly 1 page that uses rel='feed'
> according to specification and to the exclusion of any other
> autodiscovery mechanism
> # [04:46] <mpilgrim> http://seiji.asia/
> # [04:47] <mpilgrim> and they have a visible link on their page that
> also links to their feed
> # [04:48] <mpilgrim> so there would be little harm in removing
> rel=feed support from the only browser that actually supports it
> # [04:48] <mpilgrim> and little harm in removing it from html 5
> 
> To sum up: only one browser has ever implemented rel=feed, despite it
> being in the draft spec for several years, and real-world usage of the
> feature is miniscule. I recommend removing the section called 'Link
> type "feed"' from HTML5 altogether, and redefining 'Link type
> "alternate"' in a way that does not depend on rel=feed.

Done.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'