Internet Explorer Beta 2 and RSS

Microsoft yesterday allowed public access to the Beta version of Microsoft IE7.

This release has been eagerly anticipated by many adopters of RSS, as it has been rumored that Microsoft's take on RSS will bring it further into the mainstream than anything since Google Reader or Yahoo's RSS Headlines.

From my initial observations, while IE7's up-front explanation of RSS in their tour and within the browser is admirable, relatively simple and forward-thinking, it just doesn't go the extra mile to make RSS as invisible and transparent as say, HTML.

We don't have to explain what HTML is in order to get someone to visit a site. We don't have to tell new visitors why blogs are fun to get them to read and use them. There's no need to understand iPods to listen to a podcast. You don't typically have to translate what an ezine is to a newbie - you can just say "newsletter by email" and they'll get your meaning.

And we shouldn't have to reference RSS to have a person subscribe to what is essentially, a headlines or content clipping service, and that's how Microsoft should have presented this to the world.

That aside, IE does handle RSS beautifully.

First, after you install IE7, you're taken back to the tour page. IE7 is different enough from any previous version that the average user would want to know where all the menu buttons went. (In fact, I think they should put the text menu back, to be honest. My mother would hate this browser.)

The tour gives a brief, clear explanation of RSS. It would have been better if it didn't refer directly to the technical acronym, and instead just told users that they can get headline or content clippings from site. But it's a good start, telling what RSS does and how to use it.

When using the browser, if you come across a site that has a feed, the RSS symbol below the "go" button turns from grey to orange. You can then click the button to subscribe, or select the drop down if you want to pick a different version of the feed, or from a selection of feeds.

Feeds are filed the same way Favorites are - the dialog box is even similiar:

http://www.leveragedpromotion.com/screenshots/subscribe-feeds-ie.jpg

After you click "subscribe" is where the beauty comes in.

In essence, when a regular RSS or Atom feed is accessed by the browser, it is translated into a straightforward display of the information in the feed, similiar to a web page.

There is even the option to filter by the tags within the feed, so that you can get very specific about which news you're getting, as you can see in this screenshot:

http://www.leveragedpromotion.com/screenshots/yourfeed-reformatted-in-ie.jpg

Drawbacks to getting the preview now:

It hasn't crashed on me, but I just got a new laptop a few days ago. But it doesn't know how to import my faves from Firefox, all the menu items are buttons, and in different places, and sometimes, I'll cut text from another program and have to paste several times.

Overall, the new IE browser is nice. And I love what they've done with RSS.

But it's still no Mozilla Firefox....

Still, if you're a site owner who uses the web more than an hour or so per day, it's worth upgrading early, if only for the added security.

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Get links to other opinions on the Internet Explorer Beta 7 Preview and direct links to the download area at Microsoft from the RSS, Syndication, and Podcasting News