confused about the rss buttons

rss buttons

[mirileh]

questions about rss buttons:

1. what should be behind the button? an anchor with an href pointing to the feed address?

2. which button should a site with an Atom XML feed have - an XML or RSS button?

3. please let me in on the relevant standards for the buttons (if any exist) about colors, size and placing, as well as any other relevant data (any metatags?).

thanks!

[encyclo]

Welcome to the forums mirileh.

There are no widely accepted standards regarding RSS or XML buttons. The most common is the incredibly ugly bright orange XML button introduced by Userland, which usually points with a standard href directly to the feed. This tends not to be particularly useful to the end user - if the feed is served as the legacy

text/xml

then the feed is shown as a DOM tree, and if you are using

application/rss+xml

or

application/atom+xml

then unless you write an XSL stylesheet most browsers will offer a download prompt.

The best way is to complement a direct link with a link to the RSS/Atom file within the

head

of the HTML page, like this:

<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" href="/filename.rss" title="The title of my feed">

This method is less obtrusive and is supported by most auto-discovery systems out there.

[mirileh]

thanks!