19962013
RSS Development: Pleading the textInput case
I think I've read the RSS 2.0 specification a thousand times. Which is a good thing. I can't count the number of times that I've found something "new" that I hadn't quite grokked in prior readings.
Today, this little gem jumped out at me.
Of course, it wasn't too long ago that most aggregators were ignoring the enclosure element. Now look at them - everyone is rushing to support enclosures so that they can ride the Podcasting train.
Maybe the agg-dev guys will pick up on this nugget of coolness as well. Wait a second. I *am* an agg-dev guy. Okay RSS generator folks - enable me! I'd love to implement some of the interactivity that this makes possible.
Today, this little gem jumped out at me.
"The purpose of the (textInput) element is something of a mystery. You can use it to specify a search engine box. Or to allow a reader to provide feedback. Most aggregators ignore it."
Its a shame that most aggregators are ignoring this element currently. I can think of a dozen nifty things that I'd like to try out with this. Rating systems, authentication (?), commenting, voting...Of course, it wasn't too long ago that most aggregators were ignoring the enclosure element. Now look at them - everyone is rushing to support enclosures so that they can ride the Podcasting train.
Maybe the agg-dev guys will pick up on this nugget of coolness as well. Wait a second. I *am* an agg-dev guy. Okay RSS generator folks - enable me! I'd love to implement some of the interactivity that this makes possible.
See this post as it first appeared on Blogware.
4 comments
Comments are closed - these are kept exactly as they were left.
Roger Benningfield, March 29, 2005
Ross: Just as a reminder, Blogger isn't an "RSS generator".
Ross, March 29, 2005
But they *could* be! :)
I'll take my enablers from anyone that wants to play.
Is there an Atom equivalent of textInput? I'd settle to see that even...
Roger Benningfield, March 31, 2005
Nope, no textInput in Atom. Although if use of the element were to take off, there would be nothing stopping people from inserting rss:textInput into an Atom feed as a namespaced extension.
Phil Ringnalda, April 2, 2005
I can think of a dozen things that couldn't actually be done with it, which could actually be done by just including them in the body of the item. Remember, as your link fragment says, it's a subElementOfChannel: you get one for your whole feed. Commenting on the whole feed, in a single single-line text input? Is My Feed Hot Or Not, based on whatever entry you happen to be looking at now?
It was sort of useful in its day, which was in 1999 in My.Netscape, when you were looking at three HTML tips and wanted to search for "frameset" to see if they had an article on them, because who knew if they were indexed by AltaVista or HotBot or whether the article was only a month old, so it wouldn't be in any search engine, or, when (as we actually did back then), you would give some company with an interesting article or two your email address because you wanted them to send you email. Now? Dunno. I used to have a "Search me" textInput in my feed, but I couldn't find a single consumer that was using it, so I took it out.