Feed icon

RSS
Type of format Web syndication

The Feed icon is for indicating that a web feed is available on a web page. It was originally invented for the use of RSS, but it is also common for Atom and other web feeds now. The icon is normally orange, with hex code #FA9B39. The original icon was created by Stephen Horlander, a designer at Mozilla.

The icon is used in aggregators, web browsers address bar to indicate avability of a web feed, as well as on web pages to subscribe directly.

RSS formats are specified using XML, a generic specification for the creation of data formats. Although RSS formats have evolved since March 1999,[1] the RSS icon ("") first gained widespread use between 2005 and 2006.[2]

History

Dave Winer published a modified version of the RSS 0.91 specification on the UserLand website, covering how it was being used in his company's products, and claimed copyright to the document.[3] A few months later, UserLand filed a U.S. trademark registration for RSS, but failed to respond to a USPTO trademark examiner's request and the request was rejected in December 2001.[4]

The RSS-DEV Working Group, a project whose members included Guha and representatives of O'Reilly Media and Moreover, produced RSS 1.0 in December 2000.[5] This new version, which reclaimed the name RDF Site Summary from RSS 0.9, reintroduced support for RDF and added XML namespaces support, adopting elements from standard metadata vocabularies such as Dublin Core.

In December 2000, Winer released RSS 0.92[6] a minor set of changes aside from the introduction of the enclosure element, which permitted audio files to be carried in RSS feeds and helped spark podcasting. He also released drafts of RSS 0.93 and RSS 0.94 that were subsequently withdrawn.[7]

In September 2002, Winer released a major new version of the format, RSS 2.0, that redubbed its initials Really Simple Syndication. RSS 2.0 removed the type attribute added in the RSS 0.94 draft and added support for namespaces.

Because neither Winer nor the RSS-DEV Working Group had Netscape's involvement, they could not make an official claim on the RSS name or format. This has fueled ongoing controversy in the syndication development community as to which entity was the proper publisher of RSS.

One product of that contentious debate was the creation of an alternative syndication format, Atom, that began in June 2003.[8] The Atom syndication format, whose creation was in part motivated by a desire to get a clean start free of the issues surrounding RSS, has been adopted as IETF Proposed Standard RFC 4287.

In July 2003, Winer and UserLand Software assigned the copyright of the RSS 2.0 specification to Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society, where he had just begun a term as a visiting fellow.[9] At the same time, Winer launched the RSS Advisory Board with Brent Simmons and Jon Udell, a group whose purpose was to maintain and publish the specification and answer questions about the format.[10]

In December 2005, the Microsoft Internet Explorer team[11] and Outlook team[12] announced on their blogs that they were adopting the feed icon first used in the Mozilla Firefox browser , created by Stephen Horlander, a Mozilla Designer. A few months later, Opera Software followed suit. This effectively made the orange square with white radio waves the industry standard for RSS and Atom feeds, replacing the large variety of icons and text that had been used previously to identify syndication data.

In January 2006, Rogers Cadenhead relaunched the RSS Advisory Board without Dave Winer's participation, with a stated desire to continue the development of the RSS format and resolve ambiguities. In June 2007, the board revised their version of the specification to confirm that namespaces may extend core elements with namespace attributes, as Microsoft has done in Internet Explorer 7. According to their view, a difference of interpretation left publishers unsure of whether this was permitted or forbidden.

See also

See Wikipedia:Syndication on how various aspects of Wikipedia can be monitored with RSS or Atom feeds.

References

  1. ↑ "My Netscape Network: Quick Start". Netscape Communications. Archived from the original on 2000-12-08. Retrieved 2006-10-31.
  2. ↑ "Icons: It's still orange". Microsoft RSS Blog. December 14, 2005. Retrieved 2008-11-09.
  3. ↑ Winer, Dave (2000-06-04). "RSS 0.91: Copyright and Disclaimer". UserLand Software. Retrieved 2006-10-31.
  4. ↑ U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. "'RSS' Trademark Latest Status Info".
  5. ↑ RSS-DEV Working Group (2000-12-09). "RDF Site Summary (RSS) 1.0". Retrieved 2006-10-31.
  6. ↑ Winer, Dave (2000-12-25). "RSS 0.92 Specification". UserLand Software. Archived from the original on 2011-01-31. Retrieved 2006-10-31.
  7. ↑ Winer, Dave (2001-04-20). "RSS 0.93 Specification". UserLand Software. Retrieved 2006-10-31.
  8. ↑ Festa, Paul (2003-08-04). "Dispute exposes bitter power struggle behind Web logs". news.cnet.com. Retrieved 2008-08-06. The conflict centers on something called Really Simple Syndication (RSS), a technology widely used to syndicate blogs and other Web content. The dispute pits Harvard Law School fellow Dave Winer, the blogging pioneer who is the key gatekeeper of RSS, against advocates of a different format.
  9. ↑ "Advisory Board Notes". RSS Advisory Board. 2003-07-18. Retrieved 2007-09-04.
  10. ↑ "RSS 2.0 News". Dave Winer. Retrieved 2007-09-04.
  11. ↑ Icons: It’s still orange, Microsoft RSS Blog, December 14, 2005
  12. ↑ RSS icon goodness, blog post by Michael A. Affronti of Microsoft (Outlook Program Manager), December 15, 2005
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