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

[Mike Little]

On 18/05/05, Terrence Wood <tdw at funkive.com> wrote:
> I would be wary of making changes of this nature at such an early stage
> (viz "...plan to in the future"). Don't break things for (bleeding)
> edge cases.
> 
> My preferred solution is transform feeds with xslt and provide
> additional instruction on how to subscribe on the resulting page rather
> than breaking things for 99% of the net... you could have your feed
> protocol link on that page if you insist.
> 

I have to agree that we should *not* be using feed: links.

A good recommendation from lots of Usability, UI, Accessibility, HCI,
etc. resources is "don't surprise the user". I think that clicking on
a link that says "Entries (RSS)" and which looks like an ordinary link
 should not surprise the user. When it goes on to produce an error
message in the majority of cases that is not going to "provide the
best experience".
 
I'm a very sophisticated user, running Linux and Windows. I use
Firefox and Mozilla and even IE if I have to, but I don't have a local
feed reader installed. I use bloglines. I have blog lines browser
extension installed which allows me to right click and "subscribe to
this link". It does not work.
I don't consider Bloglines to be broken. WordPress is broken.

It used to be the case that Windows didn't come with an email
application, and if I recall correctly, at least Netscape used to pop
up a message when you clicked on a mailto link to say "An email
application is not installed... please install one" or some such. In
other words the browser recognised the protocol and handled it
appropriately.

I understand and appreciate that new standards don't get adopted if no
one uses them, but this is not the way to help.

How about this? 

We go back to the normal RSS/RDF/ATOM links that people are just
beginning to understand. Have those links produce a page prettified
with XSL and with extra helpful information including a link to the
feed protocol.

In addition, we have a link to the feed protocol feed which explains
just what it. "Subscribe to this blog with your feedreader" or some
such.

I think that gives us the best of both worlds.


Mike
-- 
Mike Little
http://zed1.com/journalized/