Ack! Raw code! Run! Save me! 

David Battino at O'Reilly talks about a half measure toward the 1-click RSS subscription notion that so many people talk about. It's a little Javascript that makes a popup with the URL already highlighted, so users kind of get the idea that they are supposed to copy it and paste it into something.

I suppose it's not a bad idea. O'Reilly has further to go on the road to simplicity, though, IMO, because they won't let users see the feed. The way they have the MIME type set, you get that dialog he mentions in his lead. It asks you if you want to open or save the file. When site makers set the type to text, users see the feed, which has become the convention. (Somebody tell me if I have that wrong.)

For right now, until somebody comes up with a better scheme, I'm still with Dave on this: let users see the XML. The argument against letting people see the codey-looking document is that they will cry out in fear and panic. Worldwide panic would be a horrible problem, wouldn't it, if it happened every time any user clicked on an orange button. But if it happens, it's only when folks are just figuring it out. If RSS newbies are interested and motivated enough, they'll ask somebody in the next cubicle. Everybody has an informal internet help desk.

Lots of sites have a "What's RSS" link now, leading to a page telling about the basics. In a screen demo I made about it for a work site, I show the mouse clicking on the XML badge and the feed opening. When the horrifying XML page shows up, my text caption says something like "Here is the feed; that's the way it's supposed to look. Just copy the URL."

I wonder how the new integrated "web feeds" in Windows will work. I wonder if web publishers will all be scrambling to change how we present things, the way podcasters scurried around to accomodate iTunes.

Who Said lit game passage ready for identification 

There's a new round in my literature game. #71! I'm going to have start picking some cheerier passages!