Add Feed in the Web Page: Not Good.

[Disclaimer: I work at Onfolio] Jeffrey Veen is continuing the discussion about how to represent 'Add Feed' to users, struggling to find a better alternative than the orange XML icon (and the subsequent click through and viewing of heinous and confusing xml). Here's the problem- you shouldn't need a visible link in the web page for users. The most lucid comment is made by Sam Ruby in the comments- let the readers do the work rather than trying to do it yourself! (Cause let's face it, you've got a lot of explaining to do if you're trying to help users who don't understand RSS, showing them the guts of the system doesn't really help. Maybe instead, you should try explaining the web by discussing HTTP Gets and Posts!).

Let's take an example- Onfolio. This is an app that is embedded in IE or Firefox, and it includes a toolbar that appears in the top right hand corner of the browser. Here's a nice little picture of how Onfolio looks in Firefox.

When you navigate around the web, Onfolio's toolbar is keeping an eye on the pages that you are viewing and looking for link tags that provide a feed url. When the toolbar detects one for the current page, it lights up:

Press the button, and you add the feed to Onfolio.  It's really that simple.  At no point are you required to view XML.  If you're visiting a page that doesn't include a feed, the button is still there, but it isn't lit up, indicating that there isn't a feed here:

Pretty straightforward for users- they just press add when they want to add a feed. A couple of the advantages of this approach:

1) Users always know how to add a feed- press the add feed button. This means that there is no need to search the page for a link somewhere, sometimes as a text link, sometimes as a button.  There is no need to copy a feed url, or drag a link, etc...  Press a button. Nice.

2) There is a consistent way for authors to notify feed consuming applications that feeds are available- in the page itself. No need to get users involved in the implementation details such as syndication using a particular xml format. (I'm especially bummed out about pages that let you choose atom or RSS, I mean do I really need to make that choice?).

Comments

[Randy Charles Morin]

I think people incorrectly assume there must be one magical way of getting people to subscribe. This is completely untrue. Somehow, little me has over a thousand subscribers. Why, because I make it redundantly obvious how you can subscribe.

http://www.kbcafe.com/rss/?guid=20050601031621