Web design conference - We will return to the various versions of
We will return to the various versions of RSS in a moment after a brief look at a similar Microsoft technology of that era, the Channel Definition Format (CDF). The Microsoft Channel Definition Format Like RDF Site Summary 0.90, CDF used the then-embryonic XML. A March 1997 Microsoft document, located at www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-CDFsubmit.html, contains a description of CDF. Like RSS, CDF had a channel element which, among many other child elements, included a number of item elements. CDF was intended to serve a similar purpose as Netscape s RSS. Microsoft envisaged users subscribing to channels that Microsoft would supply. My recollection of CDF was that it felt as if it were information being pushed at me by Microsoft. The use of the term webcasting by Microsoft contributed to that feeling. I didn t feel that it was information that I was choosing. It felt much more as if it were information that Microsoft was telling me that I should have. I was, at the time, very resistant to that notion. I suspect that others shared that sort of feeling, and uptake of CDF was poor. In the end Microsoft abandoned CDF. RSS: An Acronym with Multiple Meanings The following sections briefly describe some salient points about the various versions of RSS that were proposed or released. The history is a little confusing, not least because the versions were not released in the order that the version numbers might suggest. The following table summarizes the chronology. Technology Version Date Company RSS 0.9 March 1999 Netscape RSS 0.91 June 2000 UserLand RSS 1.0 December 2000 RSS-Dev Working Group RSS 0.92 December 2000 UserLand RSS 2.0 September 2002 UserLand Atom 0.3 December 2003 Mark Nottingham We think there is a very significant lesson to be learned there for creators of information feeds today. The feed creator needs to give the users the feeling that they are in control. Some creators of feeds are currently attempting to push advertisements into feeds in a way that disguises those advertisements. In time, users will rebel against that approach, just as they have done with pop-up advertisements in Web pages. With so many choices of information available to each user, any feed creator who attempts to push unwanted information at users will quickly lose his audience. 18 Chapter 2
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