I’ve noticed that many sites serve RSS as content-type text/xml, though some people (Sam Ruby & Mark Pilgrim) advocate using application/rss+xml. Syndic8 uses the latter. Ironically, even though he advocates it, Mark Pilgrim’s site apparently does not use it. Same for Ben Hammersley, who shows an example of its use in his book.
Anyway, the reason I mention this is I’ve noticed many non-technical users don’t “get it” when it comes to subscribing to feeds via an aggregator. They see the XML icon and instinctively click on it, but then don’t know what to do when their browser shows them a bunch of XML.
(This observation comes from a couple email lists I’m on that are populated by semi-savvy Internet people. They’re technical enough to have their own web businesses, but not enough to quickly grok RSS, XML and all the other buzzwords coming down the pike.)
So it got me thinking: maybe during installation the aggegator should register their products with the operating system/browser as the default handler for the application/rss+xml content-type? That way, clicking on an XML icon would be akin to clicking on a PDF link, or a Real Audio feed. The browser asks you if you want to load the file and, if so, hands it off to the aggregator.
NewsGator allows you to do this via right-click in Internet Explorer, and NewsMonster offers the same thing in Mozilla. But frankly I’d like the process to be even simpler than that. My goal is to make this even easier that signing up for an email list. One click and you’re done.
I did a quick test of a couple of aggregators in Mozilla via Preferences|Navigator|Helper Applications. Mozilla handled it easily, though the aggregators didn’t actually do anything besides load. I ran this idea by a couple of friends on the mailing lists mentioned above, and they all agreed that a no-brainer, common approach to subscribing would make RSS a lot easier for them. (One said it was a “yummy idea.” 