James, Heres the thing that Aristotle nailed on the head, that should have been painfully obvious to me as this is something I learned when I was just a wee little thing running around building 5 of MS campus, a part of MS termed the "Old
M.S. Campus" (not to be confused with the "Old Old MS" building over by Burgermaster for those keeping score) as, if not obvious by the number 5, this building was among the frist 5 buildings in which represented MS campus back in the "old" days (early 90's for those keeping score.... still).
What was it that I learned? Setting aside "A LOT!" I learned one very important thing... The User Interface MUST be consistent. The success and failure of many-o'-software products can be directly attributed to "revolutionary design." For example, Windows 95* and MS Bob, respectively.
While web pages represent individual structures of a large set of elements randomly scattered throughout a file, data feeds represent an element structure that adheres to very strict rules and guidelines. Because of this, the significant majority of web feeds serve one specific purpose. Blog content, web site content, comments, etc... and related meta-data. Can these same feeds represent more than just these things?
We both know the answer to that, but for most people, thats exactly what they do represent and will represent. There are ways around this... for example using a bootstrap xml file to call an Atom feed using the document function in XSLT. Thats how you solve your problem. Its as simple as that.
But youre not going to convince a company who has proven time and time again that MS Bob, tie die or no tie die, just isnt going to fly. Sorry. But the world is a lot bigger than you or me, or anybody else who would like to have things our way. The good thing about folks like us is that when someone tells us we can't, we instead find a way to say "Oh yes I can!" Which is what I just gave you in detailed description.
"Okay, everyone smile for the camera!"
Click. Snap.
The end. :)
* For those crying foul over using the term revolutionary to describe the UI of Windows 95, please count the number of installs of Windows 9x ++ there are in the world. Now count the rest. Which one is more? Thats why Windows 95 can be termed revolutionary, as it started a new revolution in User Interface design that, for the most part, still exists today. (
e.g. same Start button, layout, etc...) Of course someone is going to clame it was stolen from someone else, but, whatever.. no big deal.
On 3/9/06, James Yenne <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Yes, I guess I don't know what important UI feature my feeds would be
missing if they didn't use the IE7 stylesheet? (feel the shame for asking
:) I have my own feed entry navigation, thank you kindly, and yes, I (will)
use the SSE extensions. The educational box describing what feeds are with
the big subscribe button optional, thanks. All I care about is the
subscribe button, I'll do the rest.
Why shouldn't the publisher stylesheet be the default if the publisher wants
it to be in the browser/aggregator app? IE7 is dsiplaying the Atom content
tags afterall. This is not just the My Yahoo box with feed links (title and
link href) to pages contain news stories, but IE7 is rendering content tags
in the browser. I want my psychedelic tie dye background when displaying my
content tags!
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
On Behalf Of 'A. Pagaltzis'
Sent: Thursday, March 09, 2006 2:44 PM
To: atom-syntax@imc.org
Subject: Re: IE7 Feed Rendering Issue
* James Yenne <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2006-03-09 20:55]:
>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.
That means your feed will have to be missing UI features that other feeds
have. I hope I don't need to explain why that is a bad idea for a user
interface.
Maybe there could be a button "View with publisher look" when the feed
provides styling information, but it should definitely not be the default.
>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.
Or they will be irritated because it's different and the usual sorting
controls and navigation are missing?
Regards,
--
Aristotle Pagaltzis // <http://plasmasturm.org/ >
--
<M:D/>
M. David Peterson
http://www.xsltblog.com/
