Regardless of what Dave Winer—or anybody else—thinks, the term "RSS" should never be seen by the average Internet user.
I am weighing in on this because Microsoft is taking some heat from Winer, who invented RSS, and others for using the term "Web feeds" instead of RSS for a new feature in Internet Explorer 7. The new browser has a button that displays a site's RSS content.
A beta of IE7 is included with the Windows Vista Beta 1. When the new browser is released, Microsoft promises it will be available for Windows XP, as well.
Someone at Microsoft made the mistake of suggesting the "Web feeds" decision wasn't cast in stone, which opened the way for the vocal minority to weigh in against it. Now, I don't have any problem with using RSS, which stands for Really Simple Syndication, to describe the technology.
But, RSS is only a technology, a way of doing things, and doesn't have to be the name of the feature that appears on user desktops. Arguably, the most significant factors in most people's lack of understanding of RSS is its cryptic name and lack of tight integration with applications.
In making RSS part of IE 7, Microsoft gave the feature a friendly name, "Web feeds," which describes what the user sees much better than RSS, the sort of name only a developer could love.
Read the full story on eWEEK: RSS Is a Label We Don't Need to See
Author: David Coursey
Previous article: 14 November 2006
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