REBOL Technologies

Change the RSS feed for this blog?

Carl Sassenrath, CTO
REBOL Technologies
19-Nov-2009 18:43 GMT

Article #0441
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From time to time I get a feedback from a reader mentioning that the RSS feed for this blog has some "issues"... just to summarize. Well, I don't like "issues"... especially ones that are broadcast like an RSS feed is.

For example, the most recent feedback mentions that we don't provide line terminators, so all the paragraphs run together on the feed. However, if I look at the feed, I do see line terminators, but we don't use markup tags. So, what do readers really want?

I think part of the problem is that the definition of an RSS feed has changed over the years. Originally, a feed was a simple condensed view of a web page. It didn't include much markup, formatting, images, etc.

But, like everything else that starts simple, over time it became complex. For example, on this blog we originally just posted the first paragraph as a teaser to tell you about a new article. Later, people wanted to see more, so we posted the entire text. Now it seems people want to see the entire HTML content.

These days, it seems that feeds have become just copies of the HTML pages from the sites. In my mind, that defeats the purpose of the feed, don't you think? I can always browse to the page if I want to see it nicely formatted.

So, tell me what we really want for the feed. If you prefer something specific, tell me exactly what you want, or even better, send me a function or two via feedback and make a comment here that you sent it (so others can know what you propose.)

16 Comments

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