Why RSS is an Even Bigger Deal
From Ben Werdmuller:
In a few months, Windows Internet Explorer 7 will automatically install itself on most of your machines as part of a Windows Update task. The politics of this aside, what that will mean is that the majority of Internet-connected users will have an RSS aggregator as an integral part of their web browser of choice. A friendly interface will let them know when a site they are browsing has an associated feed, and will allow them to subscribe to it should they wish. With no extra software to download and the scary XML source code permanently hidden from view, usage should explode.
Oh boy, is this a good point. “Selling” RSS is likely to get a lot easier when the browser most of your patrons use makes handling feeds easy.
More on IE7 and RSS:
From Microsoft
- http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/ie7/tour/rss/
- http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/08/02/446280.aspx
From Others
- LifeHacker on IE7 and Feeds
- Nice explanation of what it is like to discover and subscribe to feeds in IE7.
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August 17th, 2006 at 2:35 pm
Hello Mr Rothman:
I wish IE7 could propagate thru our network at my hospital, but our IS dept. never adopts anything until much, much later in the cycle. I don’t think we’re alone in this. Not that I blame them for being wary of IE though.
Bottom line though is, from what I hear, it’ll be a better thing. I already asked if I could work with a single beta copy and got nixed. So behind the curve I stay, and so do my patrons
August 18th, 2006 at 9:38 am
Hi David,
Looked over the info on IE7 and am not seeing anything that circumvents the local nature of the feed subscriptions. By that I mean that I rotate through two different sites (sometimes three) in a week and it appears that any feed I store in the “Favorites Center” will be local to whatever computer I happen to be on at the time. Right now, I get around the current Favorites problem by setting up an external wiki page to store my links (del.i.cious has, until recently, been blocked for us). This issue of the local nature of the feeds would be a problem for many of our specialists as well. Do you see any bright lights in the distance to overcome this problem? IE is and will be the browser in our network.
August 18th, 2006 at 10:11 am
Hi Linda!
I belive you’re correct that IE7 favorited feeds are only saved to a single user’s preferences on a single installation of IE7.
I routinely review the feeds I subscribe to from a number of different computers, which is why I use a web-based aggregator.
To move your favorited feeds in IE7 to a web-based aggregator, you export them from IE7 and import them into the web-based aggregator.
http://www.ie-vista.com/rss.html has this to say on the topic:
“Did you know Internet Explorer can import feeds and export Web (RSS) feeds? Enable the Menu Bar (previously called the Classic Menu), go to File, then click on Import and Export, then select Import Feed or Export Feed. To import, all you need to know is where the XML file for your existing feeds is saved.”
That’s the practical advice: here’s the prognosticating:
With all of the “Windows Live” services Microsoft has been building, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they offered a service that tied into IE7 and saved all your favorites (both feeds and pages) online for you to retreive from any computer that can run IE7.
Right now, it looks like Windows Live (info here: http://get.live.com/?mkt=en-us …hover over “Live.com” button on left side for details) is set up to serve as (in additional to other things) a web-based aggregator. I find it hard to believe that Microsoft wouldn’t integrate IE7 with Windows Live in the way you would like.
Thanks for the comment- I always enjoying hearing from you!
-David
August 18th, 2006 at 8:13 pm
I don’t think anything would make me switch back to Explorer.
August 22nd, 2006 at 1:04 pm
[...] Responding to my post the other day about the RSS/feed handling built into Internet Explorer 7 (IE7), Lisa Schwartz left a good comment, wondering if there would be a way to save feeds in IE7 and still be able to view them from another computer, or if she’d be stuck only having them saved locally- on that computer and that installation of IE7. [...]
October 10th, 2006 at 5:33 am
[...] I’ve posted twice previously about how I think the new version of Internet Explorer (IE7) and Vista will help to popularize the use of feeds. [...]