View XML directly in Firefox without the annoying 'add to reader' screen
This is one of those little things that has bugged me for quite some time, but not quite enough to do anything about... until now...
Whenever I try to view an xml file, whether it be a sitemap.xml file from one of my website projects, a data export file, or an rss feed, Firefox shows me a screen with two options, "add to google reader" or "add to google homepage" ... usually I want neither, I just want to see my xml!
The fix was actually super simple... but, lest I forget at some point ( most likely not too far in the future) how I managed to banish this little annoyance, I'll post it here:
1) In FF, go to Tools > Options in the top menu
2) Select the Applications tab
3) Scroll down to "Web Feed" (how annoying ... not 'xml', not 'rss', but 'web feed'? really? )
4) Change the Web Feed 'action' to "Preview in Firefox" (mine said "Use Google" before changing)
5) Click the 'ok' button and go to any .xml file url to see all the wonderful XML , sans reader-prompt annoyance !
At some point I must've accidentally told it to use Live Bookmarks to always load new feeds. Every time I tested out one of our feeds it went straight the "add a bookmark" dialog prompt.
I agree with you on the ambiguity of the "Web Feed" option. Maybe it's meant to be more user-friendly, but to us developers it's not really that intuitive.
I just tried out a regular XML file as well and I'm able to view the code fine.
http://xmlfiles.com/examples/note.xml
I think regardless of how this option is set, Firefox will still treat RSS XML differently than regular XML. Is that what you're noticing as well?
@freelance: since I gave up pretending to actually stay caught up on my google reader feeds, I haven't even wanted to see an rss feed for reading purposes. Call me Twitter-Destroyed...