353275 - Include Site URL for Bloglines and other web based feed readers

Status: RESOLVED INACTIVE

(Firefox Graveyard :: RSS Discovery and Preview, defect)

Description

[Paul Querna]

Currently, if I sub to the CNN Top Stories from http://www.cnn.com/, it takes you to:
http://www.bloglines.com/sub/http://rss.cnn.com/rss/cnn_topstories.rss

What we would like to do is add a parameter for the 'referring site'. In this example, it would be 'http://www.cnn.com/'.  This would allow us to redirect the user back there, after they are done adding the subscription, rather than taking them to the default Bloglines reader page.  We believe this is a much smoother user experience, rather than focing users to use the back button, or go to the URL afterwards themselves.

So, the URLs would be like this:
http://www.bloglines.com/sub?url=http%3A%2F%2Frss.cnn.com%2Frss%2Fcnn_topstories.rss&site=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cnn.com%2F

With both the feed URL and the 'site' URL, url-encoded as parameters.

Comment 1

[Phil Ringnalda (:philor)]

Really? This must be another of those places where I'm unlike every other user: I read a web site, decide to subscribe, make sure my subscription was successful and unbold the stuff I just read, and move on, rather than deciding to subscribe without reading, want to go back to read the site without seeing how it shows up, and then unbold the things I already read at some later time, if I remember I already read them.

I also think it will be rather jarring when it's introduced in Firefox 3.0 after some months of not bouncing back to the site, since 2.0's already in the can.

Comment 2

[Paul Querna]

From a Bloglines perspective, we would most likely show a link to the user after they added the feed to their Subs, rather than an HTTP level redirect.  Its about giving the user options, some people will find it useful, some will not.    

Personally, my flow is I will start reading an article, notice there ia a feed at the site, sub to it, and then go back to the site to explore or read another article. 

Comment 3

[Asaf Romano (gone)]

Couldn't you use the referrer url for this? We might not pass it in this case :-/ (but, that is something we can probably fix in a dot release). Would it be sufficient if we do?

Comment 4

[Paul Querna]

We could easily extract the referal URL and use it instead, if it contained the site URL, rather than just the feed URL.

Comment 5

[Matthew Oliphant]

I'd like to bump this bug again as it's been over a year.

I recently wrote a post on my site about this issue (http://usabilityworks.org/2007/11/01/how-i-wish-rss-subscribing-would-work/ ) and Paul Querna brought this bug to my attention.

I realize this is not a bug per se (bug being an issue that keeps the user from completing the task at hand) but I think it would be a way to improve many user's experience.

To Phil's point, I agree that some user's may want the workflow as described above, but I think there could be an easy way to note to the user that subscription was successful, or if it errored for some reason.

There could also be a "go to [feed reader]" link with the success message to allow the user to decide how to proceed: stay on the site or go to the feed reader.

Comment 6

[BMO Automation]

Per policy at https://wiki.mozilla.org/Bug_Triage/Projects/Bug_Handling/Bug_Husbandry#Inactive_Bugs. If this bug is not an enhancement request or a bug not present in a supported release of Firefox, then it may be reopened.