Wednesday, March 22, 2006
How to fix RSS feeds
My friend Rene just spent a good part of her day getting her RSS feed working on her art blog and it was sort of a confusing problem she had. I helped her through it and we got it working eventually. She has actually been blogging for a while too, she just never could get her site's RSS feed working with feedburner. If you're into elf art (fae) and fantasy artwork (I guess those would be the same, huh?), you should check out her blog. She's said she would be posting a lot more artwork on her blog which I'm looking forward to.
I read this article a while back about why RSS feeds suck by Paul Kedrosky and he makes some valid points that I very much agree with.
Currently, RSS feeds are just too much of a hassle I believe for anyone that is less than uber geek to understand or use efficiently. My friend Rene is good with computers, technology and the internet but even she has trouble with this RSS stuff. I really think the only reason I understand how it works is because I actually had to do some XML development. Otherwise I don't think I'd really understand what was happening with the XML feeds.
I've stated this before but here it is again. RSS needs to be simplified to the point that I can tell my mom how it works. I've tried. I've tried many times and she still has no idea what I'm talking about. She is pretty good with computers but at this point, it's too complex, too close to the user and requires too much effort for a user to read or post RSS feeds.
If RSS subscription and viewing were pretty much one click processes, that would be great but right now, it's a process up generally opening up various programs and copying and pasting things all over the place to subscribe or read. Feed readers should be in the browsers. Setting up an RSS feed for a blog should automatically link it to a feedburner like service. It shouldn't require a feed expert to know what is going on inside the feed.
What we really need to do is get rid of the horrible names XML and RSS for feeds. Have some marketing guy come up with a cool, flashy name that marketing people can understand.
For now, I think that these technologies are going to remain in the hands of only the highly computer savvy until these problems are addressed. ¶ 7:11 PM
I read this article a while back about why RSS feeds suck by Paul Kedrosky and he makes some valid points that I very much agree with.
Currently, RSS feeds are just too much of a hassle I believe for anyone that is less than uber geek to understand or use efficiently. My friend Rene is good with computers, technology and the internet but even she has trouble with this RSS stuff. I really think the only reason I understand how it works is because I actually had to do some XML development. Otherwise I don't think I'd really understand what was happening with the XML feeds.
I've stated this before but here it is again. RSS needs to be simplified to the point that I can tell my mom how it works. I've tried. I've tried many times and she still has no idea what I'm talking about. She is pretty good with computers but at this point, it's too complex, too close to the user and requires too much effort for a user to read or post RSS feeds.
If RSS subscription and viewing were pretty much one click processes, that would be great but right now, it's a process up generally opening up various programs and copying and pasting things all over the place to subscribe or read. Feed readers should be in the browsers. Setting up an RSS feed for a blog should automatically link it to a feedburner like service. It shouldn't require a feed expert to know what is going on inside the feed.
What we really need to do is get rid of the horrible names XML and RSS for feeds. Have some marketing guy come up with a cool, flashy name that marketing people can understand.
For now, I think that these technologies are going to remain in the hands of only the highly computer savvy until these problems are addressed. ¶ 7:11 PM
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Thanks for helping me out today. I agree that RSS feeds should be a lot easier for people to use. Even when I tell people that they should subscribe to my feed they have no idea what I am talking about. Hopefully they will simplify the whole process soon.
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