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Why Microsoft is wrong about RSS

Fred Oliveira on June 25, 2005

Unfortunately I’m not at Gnomedex 5, but I’ve been keeping an eye and ear out for the news flying from Seattle. I couldn’t help but write about Microsoft’s announcement for RSS. If you haven’t heard about it yet, i’ll give it to you in short, then followed by why I think Microsoft is wrong.

So yesterday at Gnomedex, Microsoft announced:

  • They will be implementing a platform for RSS subscriptions in Longhorn, in order to allow different applications to access all the subscriptions of a user, instead of having each application deal with it separately (forcing the user to subscribe in each one)
  • Enclosure support from Microsoft applications (like the photo viewer for photo enclosures, windows media player for audio and video enclosures, etc)
  • An addition to the RSS standard to allow for listing contents

While the first two measures seem logical to me, and are proof that Microsoft is trying to go the way of the digital life that Apple’s been going on for a while, the third concerns me. This is mainly because it seems Microsoft is trying to break the purpose of RSS. Why?

They’ve announced this extension to RSS because they feel like RSS gives users no way to know what content came at what time, and how it was organized. The problem is, that’s exactly how RSS is supposed to work in the first place.

RSS is about raw content, not about content organization. Just like XHTML/CSS is about code and content separation, RSS/RSS readers are about the exact same thing. RSS feeds alone should carry information, no strings attached, while it is the reader’s function to act upon that information, sort it according to user settings, and present it.

What Microsoft announced breaks this content/code separation methodology, the way I see it (even though this is purely based on their speech, the actual implementation is still to come). I see this as a step back in terms of syndication, and so far, there’s really nothing new to what they propose. We’ll know soon enough if they manage to prove me wrong.

If you’re looking for Gnomedex content, make sure you visit Podtech, a new podcasting website by John Furrier - highly recommended podcasts. Has undoubtedly become my favourite podcast show apart from ITconversations. Rock on, John.

Comments on this post

Randy Charles Morin

I’m always doubtful of every XML vocabulary until I’m giving an example of an application that couldn’t be rewritten in the existing XML vocabs. I’m waiting. I’m not seeing.

Randy Charles Morin

By the way, we can already organization RSS s using the element.

Randy Charles Morin

You editior ate my tags.

we can already organize RSS <item>s using the <category> element.

Phil Ringnalda

Subscribe to a feed of my Amazon wishlist. It has twenty items. (Actually, I think it has either zero or one, but in theory….)

Someone buys me three items, and in shock I add four new items. The feed now has twenty-one items in it. What does your RSS reader do about the three that were in the first instance of the feed, and not in the second instance? Mine treats them exactly like the other seventeen, marked as seen but they still exist in the feed archive where I would look for the full list (or, more disconnectedly, search for people who wanted a particular thing when I accidently buy a second copy).

Or, I make Free songs I like available for download, but because I don’t want to be committed to being a full-time mirror for them, only to let my friends download them over a few days after I talk about them, I pull them every three or four days, when I put up a new one. It’s a list of one. Having the entries that link to Gone files around for all eternity would only serve to fill up my error.log.

Or, I subscribe to a to-do list that my boss and I both edit. I need to see new items as they are added, but sadly “read” doesn’t translate to “completed” so I also have to look at the full list of items. Using list semantics, when something’s marked done and pulled from the feed, then it’s gone, and I don’t have to sort through a list of date-sorted things looking for the ones that aren’t titled “Do foo - Completed”.

Danny

RSS isn’t just content though - it’s content+metadata (historically the metadata came first!). But I do think you have a point - the feed could describe the datatypes, it’s up to the client to do the sorting.

Jorgie

“… the feed could describe the datatypes, it’s up to the client to do the sorting.”

Is that not the point of thier extensions, to add meta data that lets the rss-reader know what fields should be sortable and a suggested default sort?

Jorgie

fred

If they’re adding semantic content to the RSS feed in the content itself, no. But being sure of that would require more information to be out there. I’ve written another piece on this topic that clarifies my opinion.

Russell

Yes it is the clients role to sort … but isn’t the isssue (and the risk) multiple (and possibly) indirectly solicited feeds, maybe of the same stuff, needs to be sorted/managed … so whats the “How” that differenciates/prioritises to prevent spam2? - I usually need “for Dummies” publications so I may be off point or missing something!?

Scoble’s Link Blog » Blog Archive » WeBreakStuff - Blog - You got it wrong, Robert - More Microsoft RSS (from: PubSub: Scoble)

[...] If you’re a regular, you’ve probably seen my post about RSS right after Microsoft’s announcement of their new RSS campaign and native support for it on Windows Longhorn. You’ve also seen how I disagree with one specific point of Microsoft’s announcement and blogged about it (see this blog post). This post is a reply to Robert Scoble at Microsoft who believes that my opinion is that they’re messing up. [...]

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