What is RSS / XML / Atom / Syndication?
mezzoblue — “The little orange buttons that are starting to litter the web have no doubt caused mass confusion. What are they good for? Why are they there? And why don’t they work? While I and others are starting to look into suggestions for developers to alleviate this design flaw, I thought I’d take a minute to talk about what this technology potentially means to you, the user. (If you already know what RSS stands for, this article won’t tell you anything new, but feel free to reference when you need to explain syndication.)”
I love it when designers and developers write stuff like this. Even when it gets too technical, at least it is coming from the horse’s mouth. The other thing I like about this is that Mezzoblue Dave admits that the little orange XML button approach to syndication is design flaw, i.e., poor usability. The fact that it needs to be explained reinforces that XML/RSS has been poorly deployed to the masses. That’s a shame considering that XML/RSS is a wonderful bit of technology.