There is no doubt publishers will want some style control over feeds... You can be sure advertisers will when they get in there. The only practice I'm advocating is that if I want my feed to be formatted in the browser as I have declared using xml-stylesheet, it should be allowed. If I don't have one, and 90% don't, then by all means, use the Microsoft IE7 stylesheet. I want to present to the user, for example, the tie dye background (not the blue to grey gradient) and I think it maybe reflects my site better, and will result in a subscribe click.
-----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of A. Pagaltzis Sent: Thursday, March 09, 2006 11:02 AM To: atom-syntax@imc.org Subject: Re: IE7 Feed Rendering Issue Hi David, * M. David Peterson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2006-03-09 10:00]: >On 3/8/06, A. Pagaltzis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> * James Yenne <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2006-03-08 20:30]: >>>I would call IE7 dropping xml-stylesheet directives a data lose >>>issue. >> >> Neither desktop nor online aggregators (such as NetNewsWire and >> Bloglines) have ever paid attention to such directives. >> What is your opinion on that? > >Both of these are services, not browsers. As a service, its >understandable... Limited server resources would justify this, as would >the need to cache the data feed, and the related transformation or css >files. No, one of them (NetNewsWire) is a desktop application. Like all desktop aggregators, it throws away any styling information associated with the feed via XML means. Many of them will even filter away (some of) the styling information transmitted in the body of an entry using HTML's provisions, for security reasons. >However, when the client accesses the feed directly from the browser, >the resources are no longer an issue, as your dealing with a one-to-one >relationship between user and machine, and your also dealing with a >browser that has always rendered the XML files as specified the PI >directives, as long as those files are valid XSLT and/or CSS files in >which IE supports. While you could argue that CSS support is dodgy at >best, XSLT support is quite the opposite. This is a question of semantics: is IE7 a browser, or is it a combined browser and aggregator? If you see it as the latter (I do), it follows that it has the same freedoms as every other desktop aggregator: that is, to ignore the styling information associated with feeds at the feed level. James Yenne seems to be advocating a third option: that the behaviour should differ depending on whether the feed in question in being viewed before or after subscribing. To me, that feels like combining the worst of both worlds. Interface inconsistency that depends on a remote part of the application state seems like really bad design from the user perspective, and throws away the opportunities opened up by combining browser and aggregator in a single interface. Regards, -- Aristotle Pagaltzis // <http://plasmasturm.org/>
