Precursors to RSS This section briefly describes technologies (Freelance web design)
Precursors to RSS This section briefly describes technologies that led to RSS and Atom. Some of the technologies mentioned contained key concepts that have been carried forward into RSS and Atom. MCF and HotSauce One way of looking at information feeds is as metadata that informs users about the content available for viewing. Work on information feeds, in that sense, began to reach a wider audience in the mid-1990s. The Meta Content Framework (MCF) was intended to provide information about content available on Web sites, on FTP sites, and in relational and other databases. MCF was intended to document the relationships among objects. It was a research project, associated with Apple, but it was intended to have practical outcomes. The MCF research project led to a product, HotSauce, which allowed Apple users to browse Web sites that had MCF data. In 1996, HotSauce seemed set for growth, but a change of management at Apple led to a loss of momentum in the MCF project and the associated HotSauce metadata browser. Some key staff then left the project. While the MCF project at Apple languished, the concepts of MCF were developed further in an XML context to create the Resource Description Framework (RDF). Netscape Channels One of the individuals associated with Apple s MCF project was Ramanathan Guha, who moved to Netscape around the time that support for MCF from Apple management lessened. Around the same time interest in the embryonic XML specification was growing. The XML specification became a W3C Recommendation in February 1998. In addition, MCF was one of the technologies used to formulate the RDF specification at the W3C. RDF used XML as one of its serialization formats. RDF was used by Netscape in version 0.9 of RSS. At that time RSS stood for RDF Site Summary. For reasons that aren t entirely clear to the outside observer, Netscape lost interest in RSS, partly perhaps because of unease about how RDF did or didn t fit into an information feed document. At the time RDF was pretty new, and many who created software for the Web were only beginning to adjust to the existence of XML. Also, taking RDF on board seemed to some a step too far to expect software authors to accept. In the end My Netscape used RSS 0.91, which didn t use RDF. The My Netscape portal site closed in April 2001. At the time of writing, a copy of the My Netscape documentation relating to RSS 0.90, apparently copied from the Google cache of the original, was accessible at www.purplepages.ie/RSS/netscape/rss0.90.html. Information about MCF is located at www.xspace.net/hotsauce/mcf.html, and information about HotSauce is located at www.xspace.net/hotsauce/. 17 Where Did Information Feeds Start?
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