Microsoft RSS – XML – Feeds icon
Microsoft is incorporating RSS into its new operating system, Vista. As part its work, Microsoft is figuring out what icon to use on their toolbar in IE7 (Internet Explorer) to represent feeds. That way you’ll know you can subscribe to updates on the site you’re viewing.
Microsoft developers say there are 5 parts in the experience of using RSS feeds:
- Discovering if a webpage has a feed;
- Previewing the feed;
- Subscribing to the feed to get continual notifications of new items;
- Managing the list of the subscribed feeds; and
- Reading the feed contents.
The below icons represent the choices Microsoft is looking at to cover steps 1 and 2. The icon would in the IE7 frame to indicate the presence of a feed for the current webpage. Clicking on the feed icon takes the user to readable preview of the feed from which the user can subscribe to it.
Instead of going with rectangles with the words ‘XML’, ‘RSS’, ‘ATOM’, ‘FEED’, or ‘Subscribe’ we’re familiar with, Microsoft is looking to do something new. Why? What’s the standard that guides them?
- It conveys the important attributes of feeds: newness, activity, subscription, and continual information.
- It builds on the most consistent and identifiable element used to represent feeds today: the orange rectangle.
- It avoids the use of text. Icons that have text do not generally work well for a global audience. For example, an icon with the text “FEED” may be cryptic to users whose primary language is non-Latin based. Text is very important to support an icon (in tool-tips or accompanying text). In English, we will be using the verb “subscribe” fairly widely whenever text is appropriate.
Here’s what they’re proposing.
- Use a variation of the gleam to convey that feeds are updatable.
- The ring illustrates movement around a feed.
- This is a spark to show new information being broadcasted.
- Waves to show broadcasting of content.
- This is the Beta 1 icon with our new requirements.
I know most folks do not know what RSS is or know what the RSS, XML or FEED symbols they see around net are. But I’m with Dave Winer that we ought to leave well enough alone and go with the RSS/XML buttons we see all over. Having Microsoft come up with a universal symbol looks like the they want to have a monopoly on RSS & feeds.