Tim Bray says corporate sites’ HTML is borked

by on November 27, 2005

Tim Bray says Microsoft’s developer resource sites’ HTML isn’t validating. I’ll see what we can do about that (he also admits Sun’s and IBM’s don’t validate either).

While I’m talking about Tim, Sam Ruby told me I was subscribed to Tim’s partial text feed. So I went over to his blog and tried to find his feeds. I can’t find them anywhere. I’m probably just blind. I finally found his feeds by doing a view source on his HTML. What horrible usability! Tim, can you just put an orange XML icon on your blog? Why are you trying to hide your feeds?

  • Wasn't that called autodiscovery? Also, he talked about developer resource sites, not weblogs.
  • Anne: autodiscovery is nice, but he has three feeds!!! (one partial text, one Atom, and one something else).
  • Hmm, when I visit the site in Firefox, it gives me two options.

    * Atom (full content)
    * RSS

    What sort of backwards browser wouldn't do that? ;)
  • Tankko
    >>Tim, can you just put an orange XML icon on your blog?

    XML? Can't we get rid of the words XML for a RSS feed? That's damn confusing for people who aren't geeks. I tell my dad about using RSS and he's supposed to click on a link called XML? It's time to come up for air here guys!
  • Robert: I still use IE. Shoot me. :-)
  • Tankko: get over it. There are millions of sites with orange XML icons. OK, go with how the BBC does it. They use an orange RSS icon. That's the best I've seen. It's usable.
  • Yes - I agree. An "RSS" button is much better than an "XML" button to the casual blog reader - or more importantly, to the new blog reader.

    So I just switched the button on my blog from XML to RSS - but was shocked at how hard it was to find a good simple orange RSS button - I am borrowing one from the BBC until tomorrow. Virtually everyone uses the default XML. Not even feedburner has them i like theirs since they are crisper than most.

    For example, Forbes actually just writes "RSS" next to its "XML" button, http://www.forbes.com/columnists/2005/08/17/rss.... I could def see how that could be confusing to some.

    As a side note, I also just realized that Feedburner now has tons of new features such as free GeoTags, link/photo splicing and automatic pinnging.
  • That millions of site use an orange XML button does not make it a good thing. Billions of sites do not validate and still we try to convert them.
  • I typed feed in the search box on http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/
    The second result was the feed URL.

    But I agree that even the awful XML button would be better usability, if you are visiting his site in MSIE. Let's hope the situation will be resolved in the near future, when everyone will use a modern browser.
  • Anthony Starks
    Safari nails this issue -- a blue RSS icon in the address bar, hit button, subscribe in the RSS reader
  • "Robert: I still use IE. Shoot me."

    In that case, you deserve the price you are paying to subscribe to feeds. ;)

    Get Firefox.
  • Yeah Robert...just because you insist on using a browser that's years behind doesn't mean anything.

    That's like insisting on driving a Model T, then saying that any car without a crank starter is broken.
  • Rijk: you assume most people will move soon. In my experience that totally is NOT the case. Which is why I still use IE so that I can experience the Web in the way most people experience it.
  • Robert: "you assume most people will move soon. In my experience that totally is NOT the case."

    I suspect that the people who won't move are also the folks who won't use RSS. They're just not looking to improve their experiences.

    With that said, your particular problem would be solved by a switch to an aggregator that automatically installs an autodiscovery tool into IE. With Newzcrawler, you can right-click a page in IE and click "subscribe"... no hunting for XML icons or viewing source required.
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