One Icon To Rule Them All
It’s a little orange icon without much fanfare, but to Firefox users it shows that a webpage has a syndicated feed (whether RSS or Atom) associated with it.
Microsoft has been playing with various icons to signify the same concept in IE 7, but I have to admit I was surprised to see they chose to go with Firefox’s icon. With Mozilla’s blessing, the little orange broadcaster will now be on every Windows Vista desktop and even inside Outlook 12.
Outlook 12 with RSS and Atom support? Indeed, it would seem that the commercial RSS/Atom plugins for Outlook may be short-lived. It will be interesting to see where NewsGator and the recently-funded Attensa focus their efforts when Outlook renders their products obsolete.
Nevertheless, a standardized icon across browsers and organizations is a nice win for the Syndicated Feed community. Now if we could all just agree on a format…
January 10th, 2006 at 18:32
I applaud this move. Back when you were having the Rome logo contest, my biggest concern was that text, particularly using one language, would limit the power of the logo (it’s international appeal).
It makes even more sense to have a universal symbol to indicate a feed. From a usability perspective, I agree that all feeds should be represented by clicking this icon - although perhaps the responsibility should rest with the tool used for reading feeds.
Another usability issue I have been thinking of is that you and I know what these feeds do, but the everyday person may not. Therefore, what might be interesting is to somehow embed code that would automatically add the feed to a person’s default feed reader, whether it be a local program or an internet application. Think of it as setting the “this application will open with” type scenario once there is recognition of xml. Therefore, with the touch of this universal icon, a user will know that the feed will be saved on his/her default reader, perhaps promoting a pop-up for additional identifiers.