May 13, 2004
Improved Browser-Friendly Service
We've just released a new version of our "Browser-Friendly" service that I think is really cool. Remember when you first clicked on a little "XML" chicklet and had no idea what you were supposed to do with the unformatted junk that filled your browser? Do you look back at that experience and chuckle at your naivete? Well, guess what: that's happening thousands of times every day as new users are dipping their toes into the RSS/Atom waters.
In an effort to promote feeds to the masses, we developed the Browser-Friendly service that you can apply to your RSS or Atom feed, so instead of your feed looking like this in a browser:
"That feed has no style"
Your feed can explain what's what, point the users to some feed readers, and even offer links to subscribe to the feed right on the page like this:
"That feed is super-friendly!"
To make this magic happen for your feed, just select the "Browser-Friendly Burner" service when you're setting up your feed.
If you've already burned feed to use the previous "Browser-Friendly" service, your feed is automatically updated! If for some reason you'd like the old school style that you had before, you can edit your burned feed to use the "original vanilla style".
Enjoy your new friendlier feed!
Comments
Quick addendum: The only browsers we know to offer solid support for the XSLT stylings of the "super-friendly" option are Internet Explorer 6 and and the latest production versions of Mozilla/Netscape 7/Firefox. Admittedly, this set gives you a wide degree of coverage among your feed's potential users, but it's not a 100% solution.
Fortunately, for everyone else (Safari, Opera, Konqueror, etc.), our XSLT template gracefully degrades to the "old school" look. Still makes a better impression than baldfaced XML, we think.
