Firefox and Vista RSS Platform
I whipped up a quick tool to allow Firefox to integrate with Vista’s Common RSS Feed List. You can download and install it here.
After installing, you need to select “Tools | Options” in Firefox, then click the “Subscribe … using” radio button, the “Choose Application” button.
Browse to C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Common Feed List\Common Feed List.exe. After selecting this, you can switch back to “Show me a Preview”.
Now every time you view an RSS feed, you will have the option to subscribe to it using the Common Feed List, which will make the feed show up in Vista Sidebar, Windows Live Mail Desktop, IE7, or any other client you have configured to sync with the feed list.
If you want to look at the source code, you can download it here.
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When you subscribe using the Common Feed List, you are using the RSS engine built-in to IE7. Feeds subscribed in this way save your machine bandwidth, since only one copy of each feed is downloaded even if multiple applications use the feed. You also get multi-machine sync of feeds and read/unread status, and ability to read your feeds in the cloud or on Macintosh or mobile for free.
IE7 on Windows Vista runs in a “sandbox” called Protected Mode, which limits the amount of damage that can be caused by in-process exploits. Since protected mode is an operating system level constraint applied on a per-process basis, protected mode does not apply to IETab running in Firefox on Vista. Therefore, if you want Protected Mode, you should use IE7, which includes the subscribe experience shown above by default.
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Update: The downloads linked above have been updated to support Firefox 3 (Thanks, Warren!). The code should work on both Vista and Windows 7. If you need the old version that works with Firefox 2, you can get it here.
January 27th, 2007 at 9:58 am
[...] Update: I wrote the ten lines of code necessary to make Firefox integrate with Vista’s RSS platform. Here it is. [...]
February 27th, 2007 at 10:46 am
Hey thanks a lot. You sure know your rss. lol Now I have the option to rss feed through Firefox, for the vista rss gadget. And I’ll have to agree with you that Firefox should be able to read windows vista’s IE7 common rss feeds. It defiantly saves the amount of bandwidth you use, and I’m on 56k so it doesn’t waist any of my connection. Thanks again.
March 3rd, 2007 at 5:12 pm
Genious! Pissed me off pretty good when I couldn’t get the RSS feeds working with the sidebar
Thanks alot!
March 3rd, 2007 at 6:39 pm
[...] Har du forresten problemer med å få RSS-feeds fra Firefox inn til sidebaren, last ned denne lille saken. [...]
March 7th, 2007 at 5:15 am
Been looking all over for solution. Thanks!
March 8th, 2007 at 7:00 am
This is a great tool. It’s exactly what I’ve been looking for. Thanks very much.
April 29th, 2007 at 8:28 am
Error subscribing the file exists 0×80070050 on every feed. Any ideas why?
October 14th, 2007 at 10:18 am
Error 0×80070050 is occured if you are adding RSS feed with DTDs, because Internet Explorer does not support feeds with DTDs.
October 26th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
Error Subscribing: Value does not fall within the expected range.
Is anyone else getting this error?
November 9th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
I’m trying to use your tool with Firefox 3. It installed fine and i successfully added to the list of applications available for subscribing to RSS feeds, but when i actually try to subscribe i get a message that says: “Error subscribing: value does not fall within the expected range.” Could you help me solve the problem? Thanks a lot.
December 13th, 2008 at 11:04 am
I’m suffering the same issue as Aida (above). A shove in the right direction would be appreciated.
Regards,
Rick
December 13th, 2008 at 4:35 pm
Aida, Rick — must be a backwards compatibility bug with Firefox 3; I will investigate.
December 16th, 2008 at 6:28 am
Thanks, Allen, I’ll stay tuned.
January 30th, 2009 at 8:50 pm
“Error subscribing: value does not fall within the expected range.”
is due to internal rename of URL to “feed:”. Add a .Replace(”feed:”, “http:”) to the feed URL and recompile…
January 30th, 2009 at 10:16 pm
Thanks Warren, that helps immensely!
January 31st, 2009 at 9:06 am
I added some stuff to this for renaming ATOM feeds with a modal dialog and some other small stuff. Let me know if you want the code/binary. Could be a lot better and I know of some bugs, but I had fun with it anyway.
February 2nd, 2009 at 9:16 pm
Whoa, you’re awesome! I’m at Web Directions North all this week so didn’t have the time to look at it. Can you drop me a note at joshuaa (at) microsoft.com? I wonder if we should just make it a codeplex (or sourceforge or whatever) project so then I’m not a bottleneck?
February 15th, 2009 at 9:13 pm
Hey there, have you gotten any further with the “Error subscribing: value does not fall within the expected range.” issue, having just found ya blog it’d be nice to have a resolution or light at the end of the [RSS] tunnel!
No pressure, just keen to get my feeds working as they should!
Cheers and great work btw!
R
February 20th, 2009 at 4:34 am
“Error subscribing: value does not fall within the expected range.”
is due to internal rename of URL to “feed:”. Add a .Replace(”feed:”, “http:”) to the feed URL and recompile…
Warren I’m sure you know exactly what you’re talking about but I don’t. Is this something we can fix ourselves and if so how do we do it?
(In the simplest method possible as I’m not very computer smart)
February 20th, 2009 at 10:03 am
So has there been an updated package made available? I would greatly appreciate it as I am also having this error :]
February 20th, 2009 at 2:45 pm
Sorry for the long neglect of this page — I have updated the code so it works in Firefox 3 now! Thanks everyone for reporting the issues.
February 21st, 2009 at 9:18 am
thankyou very much! much appreciated.
March 17th, 2009 at 1:50 pm
This is really nice. However, is there a way to get the feed title in place of “New Feed” when adding a feed? Something like replacing:
root.CreateFeed(”New Feed”, feedUrl);
with
root.CreateFeed(Feed.Title, feedUrl);
May 20th, 2009 at 6:21 pm
I’d have to agree with Michael. Also, how does one add feeds from links with this app?
Thanks!
Grant Smith
A+, Network+, MCP x 2, AAGS, BSIT/VC
May 20th, 2009 at 6:24 pm
To further expand on my question, when clicking on an RSS link directly, I receive the following error: “Error subscribing: The file exists. (Exception from HRESULT: 0×80070050)”
Thanks!
Grant Smith
A+, Network+, MCP x2, AAGS, BSIT/VC
May 26th, 2009 at 4:23 pm
@Michael: It should definitely be subscribing using the title of the RSS feed. It is doing so for me. For example, when I subscribe to this blog, it adds a feed titled “Better Living Through Software” to my common feeds list.
Note that the code first creates the feed, then renames it. Do you have an example of a feed where it is not working? That way I can try to reproduce the issue.
Thanks!
August 3rd, 2009 at 6:44 am
many thanks, this is just what I needed… works well!
August 22nd, 2009 at 4:34 pm
I just came back to this while clearing out my bookmarks :0 Just sent you an email with some new code that does renames, etc.
March 15th, 2010 at 3:21 pm
Hi,
does it work now with FF 3.6?!
i’m using it, and it gave the same problem like above… “Error subscribing”… and so on!!!”
any “new” solutions!!!?
April 6th, 2010 at 4:22 am
Nice Tool, but not working with win7 64bit + Firefox 3.6.3
grEEtZ,
gongoscho