[vyper]

What do we all think? Is it worthwhile providing an Atom feed right now, or are people pretty much hooked on RSS  feeds?

[pyro-manic]

No idea what you're talking about.....

[Fury]

Originally posted by pyro-manic
No idea what you're talking about.....

http://www.tbray.org/atom/RSS-and-Atom (This article's a little biased I think...)

AFAIK RSS is a lot more common but both will do just fine. However, I wouldn't bother putting up Atom feeds as it isn't just common enough...

[aldo_14]

Does firefox have inbuilt Atom subscription?

[IceFire]

I just started investigating RSS recently.  Seems like IE7 is supposed to have it built in and I'm not sure if Firefox has done that yet...but I still don't get what its supposed to do for the end user.

[aldo_14]

Firefox has built in RSS; has for ages.

[Fury]

Opera also has built-in RSS, dunno about Atom. However, I think Firefox's RSS feature is far superior to Opera's, even though I am using Opera instead of Firefox.

Hard to explain the difference without screenshots, which I cannot be bothered with.
Firefox lists RSS feed headlines and automatically updates RSS feed listing and removes older RSS feeds when they are removed the the originating site.
Opera lists RSS feeds in e-mail like manner and does not delete old RSS feeds until user deletes them, very e-mail like manner.

Some users might prefer Opera's RSS feed because Opera also shows more than just headlines, with Opera users need to visit the originating site even less frequently than with Firefox, as Firefox shows only the headline. I prefer Firefox's style though, it is simple but yet effective way. I wish Opera could be used in same way, maybe it becomes possible in later versions.

In any case IceFire, just for the heck of it, go to two of your favorite news sites for example, get their RSS feed. Now, use it a day or two. It's very convenient way to stay on top of things without actually visiting the site until you see something interesting.

[Sandwich]

Originally posted by IceFire
...but I still don't get what its supposed to do for the end user.

Instead of someone maintaining an email subscriber list, where the control remains in the hands of the list owner (hence vulnerable to abuse, i.e. spam), an RSS feed is essentially a "webpage" (XML - strict structuring, no visual design) that an RSS reader fetches from online. The reader parses the feed into seperate items, and displays it in any number of ways - generally similar to either a blog or an email client program.

The advantage is that the end-user chooses what "lists" to be a part of - it's completely "pull", no "push" at all. There is therefore NO chance of spam whatsoever, NO chance of email address harvesting, etc.