On Sat, 09 Dec 2006 04:01:14 +0600, Ian Hickson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Why is it useful for a browser to make a list of a bunch of random feeds that have no relation to one another or to the current page?
Well they sort of have a relation -- they're feeds that the author thinks the user would find useful.
This is no more tight a relation than "a page that the author thinks the user would find useful", which is usually expressed with <a> rather than <link>.
This is something that happens already in the real world -- I'm just trying to make the spec distinguish "alternate" from "feed" when it comes to such feeds.
Whoever is doing it abuses <link>. rel="feed" means "the feed for the current document", rel="alternate" means "an alternate representation of the current document". Therefore, rel="alternate feed" means "alternate representation of the current document by a feed".
Currently the orange RSS icon means "Subscribe to this page". This is a lot more useful (in my opinion) than it meaning "subscribe to some random thing".
No, it doesn't. It means "subscribe to something the author made available". Currently you have no way to know if it is the current page's feed or just a list of random related feeds.
Surely the author could have referenced any irrelevant feed but that's not a good thing to do. Conscious authors should only use rel="feed" as defined in the spec. -- Alexey Feldgendler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [ICQ: 115226275] http://feldgendler.livejournal.com
