The RSS Blog

News and commentary from the RSS and OPML community.

Bob Jordan: I haven't had a problem adding feeds recently, and I believe USM is to blame.

Nick Bradbury: The problem is that very few sites support the rest of USM, which involves adding a new element to your feed which tells aggregators the feed's URL.

Randy: What Nick suggests is simply untrue. Most every site that implements the correct Content-Type also implements Reflexive Auto-Discovery. In fact, you'd be hard pressed to find one that doesn't. I guess FeedDemon user's will be frustrated, but that's because Nick isn't intent on implementing USM. Most other aggregators have told me they plan to support USM in their next release.

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That should have read:

"I haven't had a problem adding feeds until recently, and I believe USM is to blame."

Let me begin by saying I am agnostic on the solution to the "Yahoo Problem". I have conversed with Nick via the FeedDemon support forums and with Randy via email. I just want something that works. When I am trying to evangelize RSS or teach a class, I don't want to explain a bunch of different ways to add a feed.

As I have mentioned to Randy, my biggest concern with USM that it seems fine if your reader supports it. If your reader does not support it, you cannot easily copy and paste the URL like you can in a raw XML feed. Instead you are prompted to download a file. Personally, I think that is a step backwards. So, if/when USM becomes universal it may be great, but the transition will be rocky for some users.

The answer for FeedDemon 1.5 pre-release users is to drag-and-drop the feed URL on the 'New Channel' button to subscribe. I can live with this while the feed problem is being worked on because I love FeedDemon.

Bob Jordan

Bob,
If you have an RSS reader that doesn't support USM, then yes, you are not going to benefit from USM. Switch RSS readers.

Randy

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