intertwingly

Seems like a lot of trouble to support each aggregator individually. Can't we have aggregators all support a URI scheme, like feed:, so you can just click on a link and your browser will send it to the aggregator you have set up?

This issue has come up recently in other places. I compiled a summary last week on my blog.

If people used the correct MIME type for their feeds, aggregators could simply register as the handler for that MIME type.  Pretty much every other browser tie-in/plugin/module in the world works this way.

Ultimately having a converged solution is definitely the way to go.  Point-click-subscribe should be goal (without the user having to make the specific aggregator/newsreader selection).  However, there are a few challenges on the road to a unified subscription process:

- Adoption by aggregators and newsreaders - there are probably 20-25+ applications supporting the feed reading process.  The solution needs to work for both client and server based aggregators.

- Blog server configuration issues - MIME types are great, but don't expect all the users to be able to configure them (let alone know what they are).  If we can still have feeds that are not well-formed, the chances are that'll we'll have misconfigured web servers to go along with them.

- Cross-platform, cross-browser - let's design something which isn't platform dependent, and can be supported by the popular browsers.

I guess one of factors for me creating quickSub was to generate some stimulus in this area.  As an aggregator developer myself, I think it is important that we get this key activity resolved - it is a major usability factor in the adoption of RSS and ATOM today.

For the MIME type, would the aggregator get the URL to the feed or the actual data the browser gets downloading the feed? I always thought it was the latter, but that's not what you want passed to the aggregator. The aggregator needs a URL to subscribe to.

Jason, you have a good point about server-based aggregators, which couldn't support a URL scheme-based approach without a program on the user's machine.

quickSub is a good start on the usability problem, though, and I like the attention that the subscription issue is getting. I hope that this can get solved in a useful, scalable fashion.

It is becoming very important to account for these interactions. In other words, there is a rising expectation / desire that people who visit a website will take something away from that website to use in some other context / mechanism.... [more]

Trackback from the iCite net development blog

Jason Brome: quickSub - making RSS and ATOM feed subscription easier for your readers! [ Sam Ruby ]...

quickSub 0.2 has just been released - redesigned, smaller and a more user-friendly :)

http://www.jasonbrome.com/blog/archives/2003/08/27/smaller_faster_better_orange_qui.html