Jeffrey Veen

Good points, Veen. I've often wondered the answers of RSS usability myself. I think the concept of RSS is easy to get, but sometimes there may be too much involved to get into the RSS realm... for some people.

I like your idea of the info-graphic in this instance. How about instead of messing with the expected outcome of experienced RSSers, why not create an icon next to the RSS/XML button to have that information connect to. Maybe a Question Mark, or "More Info," something to that affect.

Either way, it's good to address this. Thanks!

I agree with Seth on having a link next to the RSS button that goes to a page describing what RSS is and how to use it. This could be a good way to inform users of what RSS/Atom is and how to go about using it, especially on a site that has just started offering RSS and is not geared toward "geeks", such as newspapers, banks, etc.

Don't forget that Firefox has also added Live Bookmarks, although I don't think you can subscribe to a feed that way unless you click the orange icon in the status bar.

I think this is most definitely an issue that needs to be addressed. It's hard enough to explain to non-techies what RSS is, then trying to explain the process of subscribing makes matters worse.

The May 30th issue of Time magazine states "...head over to your favorite websites and subscribe to their RSS feeds by clicking on any button that says RSS or XML (the computer language RSS uses). Your newsreader does the rest...". As you've explained in your post, that is pretty far from the truth, unless you're using FeedBurner.

Myself, I use Bloglines to read feeds and their bookmarklet to subscribe to them although is seems to only use the link info in the HTML head, and not any RSS/XML links in the page body itself. By the way, your blog pages have two identical RSS links in the head section. :-)

Feed subscription should be as easy as newsletter sign up.

this takes me back to dave shea's post 'plugging the RSS usability hole' http://www.mezzoblue.com/archives/2003/11/05/plugging_the/
(gah, november 2003? has it been this long already?)
although many of today's common browsers still don't handle client-side XSLT (Opera, Konqueror, Omniweb...), i believe this is quite an elegant solution.

I completely forgot. We did something like this for our podcast: http://www.wehatesheep.com/americancopywriter/

It's just a pop-up window here, which I think would be the "Find out more..." link in your box.

Do you have a working example, yet?

Can't you just link an RSS feed as a feed:// URL and then set a default handler for feed:// links? On the Mac, NetNewsWire does this by default (registering itself as the handler for feed:// URLs). Makes it really easy on my computer. Regardless of the browser I'm using, I just click the RSS link and it opens NNW and plugs the feed URL right into the "subscribe" box.

Most folks still seem to be linking feeds as http:// feeds though.

Seems like it's a two pronged solution (honest, I have no military background!). Get feed readers to set themselves up as the handler for feed:// links, and get people to start using this convention on their pages.

Of course, that doesn't handle the folks that have never used RSS/don't have a reader installed....

We were struggling with the same thing while working on adding RSS to a national newspaper. Within the paper itself, people were getting confused by what to do (“I click on the orange button and see a broken Web page…”).

Since we only offer the the buttons on one page (elsewhere, RSS is included via LINK — given the audience, we’re expecting more take-up by the in-browser RSS services), we’re able to offer a big explanation beside the page (this, too, went through many iterations to try and clarify it all).

Clicking on the orange button, though, calls a JavaScript prompt telling users to paste the URL displayed into their feed reader. IE/Win users have it automatically copied to the clipboard, others are instructed to do it manually (without JavaScript it acts as the traditional buttons do).

By no means ideal, but I'm hoping the whole process will prove moot in the coming years as the technology starts handling it more transparently.

When I build sites with feeds I do not usualkly place the [XML] icon on the page. I usually use a link that says "syndicate this site" or "Syndication". This works well for those that are looking for it, and provides an opertunity to explain what an RSS feed is. This also allows me to create a form where users can select the type of feed they would like. Most times when I'm making an RSS feed I allow a number of options that filter down what the user gets in the feed.

RSS indeed needs more explination, and I think as the concept matures we will see more usable interfaces both on the browser and on the web pages. Personaly I love the way that sage for firefox handles the feeds. Still lacking slightly in usability yet a step in the correct direction.

I think they elements of the mouseover are pretty good, but I think you are really going to have to sell the benefits rather than just explain what it is, since you have to encourage them to go download an application that can deal with it (or at the very least set up an account on yahoo, kinja, or something)...

One thing that has always annoyed me about the xml, rss buttons is that they look just like all the little "valid XHTML" icons and such that people see all the time and aren't expected to interact with.

Josh brings up a good point. The orange XML button does not look actionable. It looks like a badge. In fact, on your site it's tucked under a 'geek cred' section. Much like a boy scout sews all the badges he's earned on his shirt, these signify accomplishments not user interactions so I'm not sure a hover state, a fair to middlin' sophisticated interaction in and of itself, can overcome that hurdle.

I'm inclined to move the RSS/XML call to action further up on the page and make it a very explicit call to action with a one-sentence tip-of-the-ice explanation of syndication, upon a delayed hover or click it could offer options to add it to popular syndication services as well as a 'need to know more?' link with a more robust explanation of syndication in general.

Syndication is still something that needs to be learned, and some level one (think video games) teaching would be a great thing to do. You're the man to do it, Mr. Veen.

One more thing:
It'd be nice if the tip-of-the-iceberg description cam in terms of user benefits and not a functional description. Why would someone WANT to syndicate it? And the user-benefit should be in terms of syndication as a whole. "Wanna get updates on all your sites at once and save a ton of time?" for example.

Is there a way to see how many people are subscribing via RSS to a blog? This would obviously be helpful in understanding the traffic.

Thanks

Jason

You can through services like FeedBurner. We recently re-routed our RSS feed through it and instantly knew approximately how many subscribers we have.

Tracking XML traffic is still tough, though, because (a) your XML "recent changes" file is often called automatically by others, regardless of your recent additions; and (b) if a single request for that XML file is made by a serverside aggregator then your total readership may be much, much higher than what that one request reflects.

jd/mm

One solution I like is using an XSL transformation to present the feed in an attractive fashion when it is clicked in a browser, while still allowing the rss to work its magic in an aggregator. This, of course, depends on having a browser like firefox or a recent safari which understand the XSLT processing instruction. An example can be seen here: http://www.pheed.com/examples/PheedXSL.xml If you look at it with Firefox, it should look like a webpage, but if you view it with an aggregator (or the new Safari) it will act like RSS.

Recall that if you *already have* an aggregator, it should have a toolbar button or bookmarklet to subscribe to "this" page (via auto discovery http://diveintomark.org/archives/2002/06/02/important_change_to_the_link_tag), exactly the same way Safari and FireFox work.

The badge, chiclet, or "subscribe to this page" link on the page serves as a reminder and links to "What is RSS/Atom?" for users who don't know what syndication is.

Note that Atom 1.0 recommends that feeds contain

<link rel="self" href="URI of this feed">

so you should be able to work out a portable subscription mechanism just by registering an app to handle a mime type or extension in the normal way and having the browser hand the feed over to the feedreader, without the special Safari magic.

Anything that helps make the process easy and clear is good. I use an RSS button, not an XML button, because I think that it's clearer. Under it, I have a link that says, "RSS: What is it? Why do I want it? How do I get it?" and goes to another page that explains.

RSS readers can also do a better job by allowing dragging of the button (as someone mentioned) or at least automatically picking up a URL from the clipboard.

If you're going to go the route that there be two icons (one for the feed, one to explain it) and you want to be sure it's as newbie-proof as possible the two icons should be joined in some way. Two separate icons mean two separate things to users. But, if the icons are contained within a block perhaps that would reinforce the connection for new users of Syndication.

Also, I'd go with News Aggregator or Update Aggregator. I think one of the biggest barriers is the nomenclature we've taken to using. We use RSS interchangably with Atom too often and then new people encounter Atom and wonder where the RSS link is. Same for XML. Perhaps, Update Notification is the most accurate phrase. Really, whatever you may think it ain't all news. :) Also, who but geeks use words like aggregator or syndicate?

If we really want Site Syndication to catch on we need to stop using out geek vocabulary. This isn't to say that others have limited vocabularies, just different. How long did it take to explain what a modem was when, in the beginning, we could have just called it a "computer phone link"?

The problem with Safari's RSS button is that it only handles a single feed per page. Set aside the issues of redundant RSS 2.0/Atom/etc feeds available for a given site; try using the RSS button on sites that contain, say, a main feed and a linkblog feed. It's practically random.

I still drag URLs into netnewswire.

Everytime I hear RSS or RSS Aggregator I think, "How often does the typical web user have to think about the letters HTML?" We even set up the web so that you don't have to specify a page at all - you just go to the site, it takes you to the logical default page, and then any page after that you can bookmark so you jump right to it. Even in your bookmarks file you'll see it by the title of the page, not the address. The same is actually true of http and www as well - for the masses we basically pruned all that away. If you do find a situation where your average user has to know about the HTML part, ask if the person who just said it knows what it is. Doubtful. So why are we trying so hard to explain what RSS is? I'm more for options that hide all that and just make it happen.

I don't like words like aggregator or even syndicate. Like Chris said, are those really words that the typical user uses? (A human factors teacher pointed out to me once that "delete" was hardly a commonly used word until DOS came along.)

I like "update notification" as well. Notify me when this page/data is updated. I think part of the problem that we RSS/Atom evangelists have with some of the terminology is that email already got to all of it first -- watch, alert, notify, etc... -- and we naturally want to distance ourselves from what we see as the now broken model and get people supporting the newer, better delivery mechanism. But the usefulness to the user is still the same as it's always been -- instead of making me come check out this site regularly, I'll just sign up and let you tell me when it changes.

Does the average user need two applications, an aggregator and a browser? I'm not so sure. I can imagine all of these "update notifications services" being available somewhat like a browser homepage. Open up the browser and there's all the update notifications, which you can choose to drill down into (ahhh, tabbed browsing, I love you so) or ignore them and just start browsing fresh.

Duane,

I, for one, appreciate what you are saying and think that terminology is often at the root of confusion among users. However, I don't think it is always solved by using terminology the user already knows. There are occasions when a concept is truly unfamiliar or new and we should use an unfamiliar or new word in those cases. People didn't know the word web or internet in its current context a few years ago and it would have been disastrous if we tried to make it seem too much like things with which the users were already familiar. It was different and users took up the new terms to describe it fairly easily. An RSS feed is truly different than a web page or email and we shouldn't try to hide this difference behind a familiar term because it seems easier to understand. In the end we are only making easier to mis-understand and it will be less clear. Content syndication is not like web browsing and it is certainly more than a notification. For example, there is no reason why an rss feed needs to be associated with a website at all. I think users will take to RSS quite easily once application developers start to codify common practice in standard ways which work between application. Safari RSS is an example of a good first step, although as Nat pointed out there are still some wrinkles.

Since this could easily be handled by the browser, why not come up with a recommendation and get the three browsers to support it.

All the browsers need to do is recognize feeds and be able to route them to a helper app.

All new concepts requires explaination until they catch up. The more sites do this, the better it is towards:

> feed aggregation becoming second nature--a
> convention akin to hypertext's underlined
> links

I've put a simplified faq on my site explaining feeds ( http://chetan.ckunte.com/feeds/ ). The faq comes after the links. So those that already know what they are, simply use them without reading the rest of the text/help/faq below, which then serve the newbies.

Browsers could implement this in their next version, but then they'd also require a good built-in feed reader to work. Another option is to have a simplified page when browsers open a native feed code saying that they are feed and suggest some feed readers for use (if feed reader is not built-in).

I'm not entirely saying that the terminology we have now is too complicated or that it can't be taught over time. I just think that the terminology we're using isn't entirely accurate. By that inaccuracy we're making it difficult to give the concept a foothold in the user's mind. Already on this page we've all referred to syndication by a half dozen terms. We can't even agree.

One thing that I find rather funny is that so many of us have entire FAQs on our sites dedicated to explaining what RSS/Atom is. We didn't do that for HTML or Flash or CSS. We didn't have to. Those technologies presented themselves to the end user seamlessly. Over time interested users delved deeper but they weren't required to.

RSS/Atom/Syndication/Aggregation/Feeds however don't get this seamless treatment because the user's tool (the browser) currently does a horrible job of facilitating this new technology.

Reference to Safari RSS (which I've been using since I installed Tiger) is nice but Safari, while making aggregation a one click experience with ease, does little to tell a user why they should use it. Same holds true for Firefox which has had aggregation for I don't know how long.

I'm not advocating we throw up our hands in exasperation. This too shall catch on and hook into public conciousness eventually. It will take longer though. The Web caught on when people started hearing about it on sitcoms and seeing www.whatever.com in every commercial and tv show they saw. The first writer to reference Syndication on a TV Show should get a medal cause that will be the day when users start to realize they might be missing something we've been taking for granted.

Here’s what I’ve done for my blog:

<a onclick="location.href='http://purl.org/net/syndication/subscribe/?rss=' + this.href; return false" href="/syn/">Newsfeed</a>

People can right-click that to copy the URL or save it, or middleclick it to open it in a tab. This means what an already feed-savvy user will want to do keeps working. Less savvy users might left-click; assuming they have Javascript enabled, it sends them to an overview page which explains aggregation, offers lots of subscribe buttons, and lists my headlines.

Hey Jeff, interesting article. I wrote about this some time ago as well, and did a survey of the location, type of link, and nomenclature used in over sixty blogs for feeds. Thought folks might be interested if they haven't already seen it, Where is Your Feed, http://www.molly.com/2005/04/02/where-is-your-feed/

RSS is equal parts brilliance and frustration. I find myself excitedly telling others about the power of RSS, only to bog down in the explanation process. When I get to the part about "needing a news reader or aggregator" their eyes begin to glaze over.

Therein lies the problem in my judgment. RSS will become truly useful when the user no longer must seek out and run (Web-based or downloaded) a specific tool to aggregate and read the feeds.

As others have suggested RSS functionality should reside in all browsers, and include a drag-and-drop capability. The newbie experience ought to be as follows:

* I land on a Web page/blog of interest
* I see that updated information/posts can be sent to me (even though I have no idea what "aggregation" or "syndication" are)
* Simple instructions tell me to drag the appropriate icon (orange XML or whatever) to my browser's toolbar and drop it on Feeds icon
* The feed is automatically subscribed to (based on pre-defined preferences set through browser options)
* I open browser the next day, click Feed Updates button on toolbar, and read new information from my subscribed sites/blogs
* End of story

FirstGov, the US Fed govt portal, recently launched an RSS section at http://www.firstgov.gov/Topics/Reference_Shelf/Libraries/RSS_Library.shtml

Not an elegant approach, but the essential info is there for people new to feeds.

Thank you for the motivation to fix this issue on my site. Like many others, I'm frustrated by how difficult it is to explain how to use RSS to the average web user. Based on your suggestions I've added a popup to the RSS feed on my blog. It's still a work in progress (building an RSS setup page rather than linking to Wikipedia) but it's a step in the right direction.

For those looking to drag and drop RSS feeds in their browser, I highly recommend the Sage extension for Firefox.

Actually, about 10% of the marketshare has RSS subscriptions built in to their browser. Firefox has RSS subscriptions built in, in the form of live bookmarks.

All you need for it to pick it up is this code here, which you have...

link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS" href="http://veen.com/jeff/rss.xml" />

It appears in the bottom toolbar in the form of a little orange button. Neato.

You could add a link to Sage or another RSS plug-in...once that is installed, all the user has to do is click a button and the reader will let them subscribe to any feed on the current page.

This indeed is an important issue...

What i've done with my soon-to-be-online website, is that i link users to a descriptive page telling them what Feeds are, how they work, and then the list of feeds provided.

I provide the links in three ways.
Main Link: Feed Address (http://blabla.com/feed/)
Alternatives: feed:// (feed://blabla.com/feed) - Feedburner (http://feeds.feedburner.com/blabla)

i will add alternative links as new ways of linking to feeds appear.

Two years ago I released the first version of quickSub ( http://www.methodize.org/quicksub/ ) - this was my interim solution to the challenge of easing the subscription process for RSS/Atom feeds. I say interim as I had hoped that it would spur some activity within the community to converge and develop a more seamless and broadly supported solution.

You can check out some of the original discussion in the Yahoo Syndication group:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/syndication/message/3944

Variants over the way feed subscriptions are handled in Opera might be something to consider for other browsers? Opera has two ways of automatically handling RSS / Atom (in addition to letting you add an url manually, of course):

- If there's a link element with a recognizable feed link, an button saying "RSS" will appear in the address bar. If you click it, Opera will subscribe you to that feed (or if there are several feeds listed, show a drop-down menu letting you choose which feed to subscribe to).

- If you follow whatever link (like, a yellow RSS button or whatever) and Opera recognized the loaded content as being RSS or Atom, you'll get a dialog asking you if you want to subscribe to the feed.

Granted, even if the browser is good at handling feeds, there are still issues with getting the users to understand what newsfeeds are, and why they are useful. However, as more and more browsers come with integrated feed reading capabilities, the "learning curve" will hopefully be less steep in the future.

Is this really such a complex problem? The answer is obvious: Clicking an orange XML or RSS or Atom or whatever icon should automatically subscribe the user through their (A) browser by default if no reader is defined, or (B) their preferred reader. I certainly hope this is how IE7 will work. We need to update all the browsers and readers to operate this way. It ain't rocket science. Users shouldn't have to learn squat. Imagine if hyperlinks operated as RSS feeds do. The Web would never have caught on. KEEP IT SIMPLE.

I like Jeff's idea of explanation - but how about a "Hot Help" style explanation rather than an intercept. So people who understand what it is all about don't get frustrated with it taking too long to subscribe to a feed.

Some of this would be made easier if there was one standard rather than several RSSs and Atom!!

There seems to be two issues on the table regarding usability and accessibility, and I think they cross over at some point:

1) The pain and learning curve that my mother (just kidding ;) would have in leveraging feeds as they're currently implemented and

2) The presentation experience of the aggregator is based on an object model of institution or ownership, rather than subject matter or context.

People in the RSS 'know' can use the current feed/aggregator landscape, though I'd argue that the stitching of disparate feeds across the net into an interface is still a bit of an archaic user experience.

The fact that the default object definition is based around the root of the feed and not the subject matter (you do the work to manage that), continues to reflect ownership instead of discourse. Safari's leveraging of the Spotlight technology is managing that issue nicely, but it still only draws from a set of "sponsored" news sources. The message seems to be, "If you want to create your own group of feeds, go for it. But our paid sources don't want their jelly mixed in with your peanut butter."

We all know that PB&J is a tasty treat.

So the challenge isn't just tackling the feed point itself, it extends to the environments that can host and leverage these feeds from multiple perspectives.

A few practical things:

"News Reader" (or Newsreader) is I think preferable to "News Aggregator". It sounds smoother, less tech-y. Also, I prefer "subscribe" to "syndicate". "Subscribe to this site" is a pretty clear indication of what's going to happpen: I subscribe, and when new stuff goes up I find out about it. "Syndicate" has a less clear meaning.

As for the "Find out more" page:

RSS is an XML-based file format that can be read by a compatible news aggregator... (snore/panic)

Tell people what they can do with RSS. Base it on teaching them how they can subscribe to a site. Suggest a newsreader or two.

Hmm... for the simple part of the javascript widget I'd say put the link in normally and put in a javascript handler for onclick or onhover. Then include what a couple others suggested, a little question mark icon when javascript is turned off in the noscript. The link still works, and the helpful info is still available.

As for the larger picture "syndicate" is a perfectly acceptable word. It's already out there, news syndicates, syndicated television shows... How much more pervasive should it be? Syndication is exactly what we're doing when we provide alternate feeds of information to be harvested.

Subscribe wouldn't kill me, it connotates regular updates like your newspaper being delivered every morning. I think I still prefer syndicate though.

Great topic - I'm very new to RSS feeds and blogging in general, so I can tell you - if I weren't technically inclined and a general geek, I'd never read your blog, or any others, via feed. It's not intuitive enough.

I like your Javascript bubble onMouseOver - it works. Maybe a "what's this?" link right next to your XML badge. I don't imagine that it's a downer for experienced users (see my first sentence).

Firefox does have the RSS feed-deal in the lower-right corner - which detects the feed and allows adding to favorites - this is a great feature, and only one of many that are causing me (a die-hard MS programmer) to switch browsers.

No names or timestamps on these comments, eh? Interesting approach.

Ha! Another reason to switch browsers - I just realized that IE doesn't display your comment name/date header correctly. Everything renders correctly in Firefox.

YES this needs to be addressed. I'm no techie but I do rely on my aggregator. With some feeds I STILL consider it luck if I get suscribed. Others I never do figure out and just rely on Newsgator to find the feed if I type in the site's url. Anything to improve user experience would be welcome -- if past due!

What if aggregators would monitor in offline a specific folder under the browser bookmarks, for example a folder that will be called feeds and anyone who cares to subscribe for a feed will drag the XML icon to that folder. On a second thought this can be helpful only to users who already use an RSS aggregator.

It's a low-fi solution, but I quite like the way that other people at the BBC have attempted to solve this for podcasting: In Our Time. I don't know what you think of that approach...

I've done a lot of experimenting with different ways to get people to subscribe. What worked best for me was the chicklet solution.

http://www.kbcafe.com/rss/chicklet.aspx

I put these chicklets up a few days ago and I'm starting to really see a broad range of subscribers beyond what I was already getting.

I'm with David Ely on this. Why resort to fancy names like RSS, Syndication or XML when we have a perfectly common and usable word like "subscription" that every one can understand. Drop the silly orange icons please! All of them.

It starts with that many RSS feeds are labeled "XML" (see your screenshot, for example). There are so many XML derivatives that it just means nothing and thus is a real problem.

I think Tom's pointer to the BBC is a fairly good transition to where we are heading. It will take the desktop OS or browser to make it easier. Neither of these are very innovative or quickly adaptive on the Windows side of the world.

Firefox was the first browser (at least that I know of) to handle RSS outside the browser window, but it was still done handled in a side-window of the browser. Safari has taken this to the next step, which is to use a mime-type to connect the RSS feed to the desktop device of preference. But, we are still not where we should be, which is to click on the RSS button on a web page and dump that link into ones preferred reader, which may be an application on the desktop or a web/internet based solution such as Bloglines.

All of this depends on who we test as users. Many times as developers we test in the communities that surround us, which is a skewed sample of the population. If one is in the Bay Area it may be best to go out to Stockton, Modesto, Fresno, or up to the foothills to get a sample of the population that is representative of those less technically adept, who will have very different usage patterns from those we normally test.

When we test with these lesser adept populations it is the one-click solutions that make the most sense. Reading a pop-up takes them beyond their comfort zone or capability. Many have really borked things on their devices/machines by trying to follow directions (be they well or poorly written). Most only trust easy solutions. Many do not update their OS as it is beyond their trust or understanding.

When trends start happening out in the suburbs, exurbs, and beyond the centers of technical adeptness (often major cities) that is when they have tipped. Most often they tip because the solutions are easy and integrated to their technical environment. Take the Apple iPod, it tipped because it is so easy to set up and use. Granted the lack of reading is, at least, an American problem (Japanese are known to sit down with their manuals and read them cover to cover before using their device).

We will get to the point of ease of use for RSS and other feeds in America, but it will take more than just a text pop-up to get us there.

Since RSS-feed are XML, you can style them using simple CSS-rules.

I'm thinking of styling the RSS-feeds, zo when visitors click on the xml-button, they see the styled feed (like in safari 2).

This way they don't think it's a bunch of source code from the website ;).

I think if their is a link to an atom or rss feed on a page - when someone clicks the Bookmark This button in the browser - they should be givin the option what to bookmark. For example if they click on Add To Favorites a dialog box pops up to Bookmark the Page, RSS Feed, or ATOM. It would also be slick to have the Hook-ability from the link with javascript to add to rss - like their are Add To Bookmark Links in the page itself.

I agree with Jens. I don't use the XML icon at the moment, because I don't think it's appropriate. Imagine trying to introduce someone to RSS: "It's a simplification of RDF. To find an RSS feed, look for the XML icon...".

Thus far, I haven't figured out a good way to introduce new users to the concept in my application, which is publication of my church's sermons:

http://billericaybaptist.net/sermons

What we need is a really good *single* explanation page to which all RSS-"enabled" web pages can point new users.

RSS is in the same stage as when Real Audio or PDFs began popping up on the Web. Back then, when you clicked on a link for a Real Audio stream many times you got the same kind of output as you do now when you click on an RSS feed.

Today browsers know how to handle such media and eventually the browsers will support RSS, as we've seen with Safari and FireFox.

As of right now the FeedBurner method appears to be the most backwards and forward compatible option.

My two cents. I like the idea of making feeds easier to subscribe to. I don't like the notion of breaking the semantics of a simple visible link to the feed. Why not add your option at the top of a list of subscription options and have the plain old xml link appear at the bottom.

BTW, Dave Winer had a rif about this a couple of months ago. He was talking about the explosion of feed subscription options. He suggested putting in some sort of intermediate service that would allow you to pick from an externally maintained list. Sort of like ping-o-matic. Probably too complex and unusable.

it's really great to be part of your visitor cos its only those who understands why and what it takes to build a web standards site that would appreciate your site.

I noticed somthing on your websites status bar and it say's " done, but with errors on page "

Apart frm this, i was wondering if we could have a word or two, my names sheun. thanks

In the box you could also provide a link to shut off the boxes, and then save that in a cookie. That's just to fix the drag&drop problem in safari that you were talking about.

I suppose it would probably be a better idea to just have that stuff in the sidebar, to tell inexperienced user what Atom/RSS/XML, etc. is.

i have a rss question, interesting article so seemed like a good place to post it.

there are lots of stand-alone rss reading apps (i like http://www.newsfirerss.com/ for example for my mac at work) ... but are there any broswer-based, customizable, rss aggregators?

for instance i would love to be able to set up my own rss homepage, that would show maybe rss feeds of : recent gmail emails, recent news stories from my favourite newspapers/blogs/portals, recent photos from my flickr account and my friends / and maybe my 43 things feed as well, along with perhaps a to-do-list from basecamp, and maybe my local weather, and a wee google search option.

for me this would be the true definition of useful rss as it would let me see at a glance what was happening on the parts of the web that i use most, AND let me get straight to them. i'd estimate i spend from 5-20mins a day simply navigating between often used sites, logging in and out, etc etc.

now if i could move things about on this page by dragging and dropping (in the vein of http://www.google.com/ig) and easily set up my browser to allow one click adding to this rss-homepage, that would make rss great for me!!!!

if anyone knows of any sites that can help me do this (i don't want to progam anything myself), please email me.... or maybe someone could help me to develop something along these lines?

(i've just found http://www.bloglines.com but it is not very intuitive... especially if this was gonna be something that non-techno-heads could use...)

I like these ideas...

To customize this behaviour across a wide range of sites, it's possible to have a generic using a Greasemonkey (or similar) user script that intercept clicks on feed links...

eg: http://prasadblog.blogspot.com/2005/04/greasemonkey-feedlink-with-popup.html

this is almost an argument for NOT actually specifying this kind of UI behaviour in the site itself - instead leaving it up to the UA to decide how to interpret the link... As long as the and tags for feeds use standard markup, users can customize the behavior of clicking on feeds to suit their preferred form of aggregation...

though this doesn't solve the basic usability problem of "click on feed link... WTF!!??!!", as users would obviously have to know enough to have installed Greasemonkey or similar extension in their browser in the first place.

I think we are going to see this problem more and more, beyond simply feed subscription. Another example is Greasemonkey scrip installation, as Tony (ponderer.org) points out.
We need some extensible way of hooking up data in a web page to specific handlers (desktop or web) that the user could customize. You can do that with mailto: urls in most browsers, but that's still very limited. I see a need for map/direction handlers, ISBN handlers, ...
I posted about this in more details at http://blog.monstuff.com/archives/000232.html (Open-ended links, link re-writing)

As much as I hate the look of their blogs, check out how Microsoft handles RSS orange buttons for MSN Spaces (you'll find the link at the bottom)

http://spaces.msn.com/members/unfoldedorigami/

I think it's a good example of what you're talking about. Also, for those that are interested I wrote an essay about the current state of RSS and Google here:

http://particletree.com/features/the-importance-of-rss

As much as I hate the look of their blogs, check out how Microsoft handles RSS orange buttons for MSN Spaces (you'll find the link at the bottom)

http://spaces.msn.com/members/unfoldedorigami/

I think it's a good example of what you're talking about. Also, for those that are interested I wrote an essay about the current state of RSS and Google here:

http://particletree.com/features/the-importance-of-rss

I just posted about this recently as well; I'm a big proponant of feedburner.com which not only made the end user experience better, it made my experience better as a publisher. Making the RSS User Experience Better

Cheers,

karl