How does firefox know what the RSS link for a site is?

How does firefox know what the RSS link for a site is?

If I go to a site like http://blogs.msdn.com/ashleyf/ with Firefox, it has a little RSS icon on the address bar that you can use to subscribe to the feed. Something like Google Chrome doesn't have that icon. How does Firefox know what to subscribe to? Right now the only way I can subscribe to these sites is to just open them in Firefox, since I use Chrome as my main browser.

Asked by: Guest | Views: 264

Total answers/comments: 2

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bert [Entry]

"If you click the RSS icon, it offers you two choices (for the page you linked to) which are -not coincidentally- the same as the titles those offered in the <head> of the page:

<link rel=""alternate"" type=""application/rss+xml"" title=""Code Monkey Have Fun (RSS 2.0)"" href=""http://blogs.msdn.com/ashleyf/rss.xml"" />
<link rel=""alternate"" type=""application/atom+xml"" title=""Code Monkey Have Fun (Atom 1.0)"" href=""http://blogs.msdn.com/ashleyf/atom.xml"" />

I assume then, that Firefox takes note of these <link>s while Chrome does not (or does it in another -less obvious or intuitive- way)."

bert [Entry]

"Well, I used fidler, and when I deleted this line -

<link rel=""alternate"" type=""application/atom+xml"" title=""Feed for question 'How does firefox know what the RSS link for a site is?'"" href=""/feeds/question/47636"">

The button went from this page, so I guess this is what controls it!"