Joshua Allen writes about the "Orange XML Icon" and how it isn't accessible, in response to a post by Robert Scoble. He also suggests that browsers should include functionality to make RSS/Atom/News feeds easier to use.
I'm not sure if he's aware of this, but OmniWeb 5 (currently in beta, and only on MacOS X) actually does this. On a page where an RSS feed is available, an icon (a newspaper with a "+" symbol) appears in the status bar of the window, as seen below:
You can then click on the icon to display a list of feeds available on that page!
I believe there is an inbuilt newsreader in OmniWeb 5, but I've never used it. It would be cool if you could then pass these feeds to your newsreader of choice.
I think this is a step forward, but he is right in saying that RSS/Atom/whatever feeds should be easier to use.
Very cool! I believe Opera now has functionality like this in the latest release too. If using IE, newsgator installs a similar toolbar button in IE, which performs autodiscovery and just picks the best version of the feed for you. Desktop sidebar also installs one, so if you have both newsreaders installed, you have *two* toolbar buttons!
But part of the point I am trying to get across is that it should be more like printing. Regardless of whether I have installed HP printer or Canon printer, I print the same. I don’t have different print buttons that work only with particular printers. I suspect that OmniWeb subscribe button works only with the OmniWeb reader. And opera works only with opera RSS reader, and so on.
Ahhh yeah, that’s a good point. There should be one, standard button that is used to subscribe to a news feed, that autodiscovers, etc, etc.
I’m pretty sure the OmniWeb ’subscribe’ button will only work with the inbuilt newsreader, which is a bit of a shame. Maybe it’s up to the Mozilla folks to add that sort of functionality (and cascade it down to Firefox, Camino, etc). That’s only a small percentage of the browser market, though. There’s still IE.