What Role Will Web Designers Play in an RSS World?

Right now the number of Internet users who subscribe to RSS feeds is tiny. Have no fear, it will rise dramatically in the years ahead. As I told Debbie Weil today, I think RSS is the second coming of the web. But what will web design look like on that fateful day when more people subscribe rather than browse sites? The final answer to this open question has huge implications not only for the design community, but for toolmakers like Adobe and advertisers too.

According to a new study from Glamorgan University Business School in Wales men and women view web design as differently as Mars and Venus. If there's anything important to take away from this survey it's this - web design matters and it will continue to matter in an RSS world. But how will web designers differentiate their branded feeds if the aggregators are large and in charge?

Today way too much of a feed's style sheet is left up to the aggregator - and the user. That's not their fault. My understanding is that it's the RSS spec (correct me if I am wrong). It wasn't made for design. Minus a few embedded photos and colored/styled text, there's not a lot a designer can do now to control how their feed looks in an reader. As RSS takes off I suspect the designers will demand greater control over the look and feel of their feed and some basic style extensions will be added to RSS 3.0 and beyond.

At the same time, I think you're going to see the aggregators try to exert even greater control in owning your design experience. They already do this on the desktop. Using FeedDemon or NetNewswire you can add a custom stylesheet to any of your feeds. The web readers like Bloglines will add this as well. Just look at Microsoft's skinable Start aggregator to get a taste. The designers aren't going to sit back and let the distributors own their branded image. How come no one's crowing about this yet? Will readers revolt against over-designed feeds? Time will tell.

Technorati Tags: Design

Comments

[Rick Stratton]

kinda related news...
Dreamweaver 8 to integrate RSS feeds.

http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/mx/dreamweaver/articles/dw8_newfeatures_03.html/

[James Snell]

Hey Steve, quick comment regarding the sentence: "As RSS takes off I suspect the designers will demand greater control over the look and feel of their feed and some basic style extensions will be added to RSS 3.0 and beyond"

The issue is that according to the RSS 2.0 spec and Dave Winer, there never will be a RSS 3.0. The RSS specification is frozen. No changes are allowed to be made in the core of the specification for any reason. Any new things added to the spec will need to be done in the form of extensions. Unfortunately, extensions to RSS have a long history of interoperability challenges due to the rather ad hoc way in which they tend to be defined.

[Niall Kennedy]

You can style a feed at the feed-level with a XML sytlesheet for viewing in your browser but this may have less of an importance as more tools integrate feed support or pass off handing of any discovered feeds to an aggregator. You can style individual items within a feed most commonly with CSS inside the description field.

[Glenn]

Well, at it's heart an RSS or Atom feed is simply an XML file, and XML can have presentation info attached to it by a linked stylesheet or XSLT file, which can control how it's formatted.

At the moment, I'm not aware of any aggregator that supports the display of and RSS feed via an included stylesheet, but there's no reason why it shouldn't.

[Mike D.]

I think you're overlooking the most likely usage of RSS feeds both now and in the future: non-branded, text-only excerpts which lead you back to the publisher's web site to read the full article. This is clearly the most economic way to publish RSS and probably always will be. There are selfish consumers who "demand" full-text feeds, but hey, I "demand" commercial-free TV too... that doesn't mean I'll get it and that doesn't mean I won't watch TV if there are commercials in it.

Smart use of RSS does not ignore the economics of web publishing... it exploits it. The feed *is* the ad for the site.

[Mark Sigal]

Somewhat related to this topic is a post I just wrote for O'Reilly on RSS as a Web 2.0 platform.

A key part of the thesis is that RSS evolves beyond simple feeds to messages with rich payloads, which both enables some really cool applications and raises all sorts of interesting questions from a UI, usability and workflow perspective.

[Mike Czepiel]

Just to throw my thoughts out there:

You should not (and hopefully will not) ever see stylistic control literally embedded into RSS, Atom, or whatever other XML syndication application you use in the future.

Blindly following the development path of HTML is not the answer. There already is a excellent option of styling RSS and Atom using XSL,CSS, and XSLT.

With the how already answered, it is only a matter of extending support into more readers, and figuring out how much control to give to designers.

Bottom line: Whatever syndication format we use should only impart semantic meaning.

It will be interesting to see what does happen to graphic artists in this though. While there will always be a need for sites, the value of styling a feed will most likely be somewhat questionable.

Very likely, you'll see feeds provided with varying levels of styling (read: branding).

It would be helpful if some levels were standardized and some layouts became common. Much to the detriment of the artist unfortunately...

Just some thoughts.

[web designer]

i agree with Mike.

[Andy, web design manager]

Time will tell - you are right. I don't think there will be time when people accept standards and there's no demand for style and distinctiveness. Web design matters now and I'm pretty sure it will matter in future!

[tobto]

I would say a potential web designers will never got lost in the sea of reality. As for RSS, I see one opportunity, - design in the means of semantics / pragmatics / etc. - not only visually.

[Professional web design Specialist]

RSS feeds would eventually speadout through the Internet because of its daily update and watchlist on ever new stuff that comes out.

[Professional web design Specialist]

RSS has been takin the Internet by storm recently because more surfers are subscribing to have the latest news and updtes on the web.

[Helen, web designer]

I think subscription is not so widely spread because of the fear factor. We are afraid to get all sort of unnecessary and annoying things if subscribed to something.

[Alan]

To my mind the role of design is always one to simplify ones life and to be nice for one's eyes.