RSS Best Practices? Sep01 '04
One way to interpret RSS, among many others, is "Rich Site Summary," right? Well, how come there are so few "summaries?"
Intro’s vs. Summaries
There is a difference between "intro’s," and "summaries."
A summary is a clear and distinct sentence, or two, that "sums up" the meaning of the entire article. A summary should be quick, concise, and it should hit on the most important point of the article.
An intro is simply the first few sentences of the entire article.
The problem is that an intro may not hit on the "meat" of an article. It may not be related to the main point at all. Therefore, a reader has no idea what they are getting themselves into.
The better use of my time
A summary is more appropriate, for RSS.
When I scan headlines and entries of over 100 feeds that I check daily, how do I know which ones are worth reading? Sometimes, it’s hard to tell. Feeds that provide a summary, over an intro, are the ones that are a better use of my time, and help me decide whether to read further, or to skip to the next feed.
Unfortunately, of all the feeds that beg my attention, only a handful actually provide summaries.
The wrong way to use RSS
I think this is the wrong way to use RSS. I don’t think it was made to showcase "intro’s."
I also don’t think it was made to showcase entire articles. Although showing entire articles may be considered helpful to the end user, it takes meaning away from the efficiency and "proper use" of a specific technology.
Showing an entire article in your RSS feed is like cramming all of your CSS into the <head></head> tags of your HTML document.
You just don’t do that, right? You put it into an external file, and you "call it" from that external file, with one simple line of code.
Sure, your CSS will still work fine, if it is all in the <head></head> tags, but there is some balance and harmony that is acheived by using your CSS more efficiently. It also cleans up the main HTML page.
The same principles should be applied to RSS.
Progress to be made
RSS is very young. I think, over time, it will start being used more appropriately. Just as XHTML, CSS, JSP, JavaScript, etc, all have "best practices," I think RSS will also start to be used with "best practices" in mind.
Every technology, programming language, application, etc, should have "best practices," so users can take advantage, and use the product more efficiently.
I am guilty too
I am making all of these points, when I am guilty of committing the same mistakes. This is just a new theory I have, and certainly I will be making the changes to my own sites soon.
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is published and produced by Matt Thommes - an independent publishing enthusiast, mobile blogger, content creator, informative writer, web developer from Chicago.
Never one to conform, Matt intends to promote the effect the web has on our lives, in an effort to intensify, instruct, and clarify all that is happening around us.
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