[wp-hackers] feed:http://address problem

[Dave Mussulman]

Matthew Mullenweg wrote:

> Dave Mussulman wrote:
>
>> I'm impressed with sites that use XSL with their XML/RSS feeds to
>> display a 'what is this?' page to their users rather than showing them
>> the direct feed.
>
>
> "I was on the front page and clicked a link and saw... the front page 
> again! But uglier."
>
> No one who clicks those links wants to see the XML or even a styled 
> version of the XML, unless they're a developer debugging something. 
> They want to subscribe to the feed, and we should do what we can to 
> make that as easy as possible,
>
I disagree.  If I want to subscribe with bloglines, or anything that I 
copy/paste the feed to somewhere else, the feed: links don't work.  I'm 
also against people who _only_ put RSS links in the header <link> tag.  
(In that case, I can see there's a feed for the page, but if I click on 
the lower right link in Firefox it will do the active bookmark thing and 
not give me the feed link.)

I don't think http://feeds.feedburner.com/wwdn looks like "the front 
page again, but uglier."  In fact, I like that it has links to 
documentation and quicklinks for auto subscribing to the feed.  Or, I 
can just copy the link from the address bar whereever my 
reader/aggregator uses it and go from there.  I think Feedburner could 
use a bit more documentation, but I like that presentation better than a 
feed:http:// link.  (Note that the XSL has a "Subscribe now using 
feed://" link.)

Dave