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Feed Proxy: View Raw RSS/Atom Feed Data in Firefox 2.0 #

Date: Monday, October 01, 2007
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Firefox 2.0 has a nice RSS/Atom feed preview feature, which pretty-prints the feed and allows you easily subscribe to it in a feed reader. While this is nice from a user's standpoint, it can get in the way when trying to debug or otherwise see a raw feed as a developer. There is no option to turn this mode off, which seems to be making some people unhappy.

To help with this use-case, I made Feed Proxy, a simple service that gives you back the raw XML output (by adding a 512 byte dummy header that makes Firefox not invoke its feed preview code). Its page has more details on how to invoke it and what its caveats are.

11 Comments

cool. thanks. that firefox "feature" is a real pain sometimes. i had always assumed it could be toggled off in about:config, but i was too lazy too ever confirm. but i guess you're saying there is no workaround.

your solution will come in handy.
Posted by: Anonymous October 1, 2007 at 5:22 PM
Does view-source:http://feeds.feedburner.com/PersistentInfo not work?
Posted by: vi October 1, 2007 at 6:31 PM
Unfortunately view-source does not pretty-print the XML, which makes it much harder to read.
Posted by: Mihai Parparita October 2, 2007 at 5:31 AM
Another option is to quickly save to desktop and reload the raw xml - pretty printing with no extra installs :)
Posted by: Collin October 3, 2007 at 12:04 AM
Try doing that 50 times in a row and you'll see what a huge drag that is. I have to do a lot of bulk work of looking inside of RSS feeds and every additional step is painful. Mihal, you have saved me a crapload of time and wasted clicks. Thanks!
Posted by: Anonymous October 3, 2007 at 7:04 AM
well I have to say, when I first saw this last week I thought "Why would anyone need this. I mean, view-source has always worked for me."

And then this morning I was poking at a feed, which looked like crap and was entirely illegible in view-source [cue the heavenly light and accompanying chorus of angels signifying a deeper level of insight].

Wow. Incredibly useful. Thanks a bunch!!!
Posted by: cori October 11, 2007 at 6:26 AM
does this work anymore with firefox 3? not being able to see the xml is driving me mad.
Posted by: Anonymous July 7, 2008 at 1:29 PM
If you use Firefox and use the extension IE tab if you look at your rss feed it will show an un-styled xml document!

This works in Firefox 3 too :)
Posted by: Anonymous August 4, 2008 at 3:02 AM
not on linux, though. as there is no IE tab...
Posted by: Anonymous August 20, 2008 at 4:07 PM
I know its been around for a while, but I just found Feed Proxy and it was really helpful. Thanks!
Posted by: Ben December 26, 2008 at 2:16 PM
Hey, thanks a lot for this! Very useful, I had been looking for a nice and simple solution to view the xml of feeds!
Posted by: Juan January 8, 2009 at 10:49 AM

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