RE: About RSS

 On Wednesday, August 24, 2005 Justin Thorp wrote in reply to BarryMcMullin

>> It might be an idea to mention that RSS is one of the key technologies 
>> for accessing blogs?  Some of the target audience may have heard at 
>> least something about blogging, so this would be another hook to help 
>> understand what RSS is about...
>>

> I would be concerned that adding a mention of blogging could add more complexity to the page.  It                      > would be adding one more buzz term that a lot of people aren't familiar with yet.

I fully agree with Justin. 


Sincerely
Helle Bjarnø
Visual Impairment Knowledge Centre
Rymarksvej 1, 2900 Hellerup, Denmark
Phone: +45 39 46 01 01
fax: +45 39 61 94 14
e-mail hbj@visinfo.dk
Direct phone: +45 39 46 01 04
Mobile: +45 20 43 43 47
www.visinfo.dk
www.euroaccessibility.org 




-----Original Message-----
From: w3c-wai-eo-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-eo-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Justin Thorp
Sent: Wednesday, August 24, 2005 5:12 PM
To: Barry McMullin
Cc: EOWG (E-mail)
Subject: Re: About RSS


Hi Barry,

Thanks for you comments!

On Aug 8, 2005, at 11:33 AM, Barry McMullin wrote:

> It might be an idea to mention that RSS is one of the key technologies 
> for accessing blogs?  Some of the target audience may have heard at 
> least something about blogging, so this would be another hook to help 
> understand what RSS is about...
>

I would be concerned that adding a mention of blogging could add more complexity to the page.  It would be adding one more buzz term that a lot of people aren't familiar with yet.


> At the moment, even if I know perfectly well what RSS is, it seems I 
> have to go via the "About RSS" page before getting the actual link I 
> can subscribe to.
>

I did some research and about half of the sites took me directly to the RSS feed and the other half (e.g. NY Times, CNN, and Yahoo) took me to an About RSS feed page with links from there to the RSS feed.

We determined in the UCD analysis that we wanted to cater to novices.  Therefore, at this time we'd rather have the link explain itself for now.  We may change it later.


> That is not really consistent with the usual practice I've encountered 
> elsewhere, to the extent that I missed the link completely the first 
> couple of times I looked (I assummed that an RSS feed for the 
> "Highlights" would be somewhere close to the "Highlights" heading, or 
> at least in the same column...). I'm inclined to suggest that the RSS 
> feed link might be right in the "Highlights" header element or 
> immediately after? This would be as well as, and separate from, 
> providing the "About RSS" link in the side navigation panel...
>

This is something that we are looking into but its not a high priority at this time.

Thanks again for your comments!

Sincerely,
Justin Thorp
justin@mycapitalweb.com

Received on Thursday, 25 August 2005 11:51:17 UTC