Among the additions in FeedDemon 1.10 is support for the feed protocol for hassle-free feed subscription. This new protocol simply involves using feed:// rather than http:// for feed URLs.
Now, I know some aren’t happy with the existence of this new pseudo-protocol, but let’s face it: subscribing to feeds is a huge pain right now and it’s causing far too much confusion. Feed reading has left the phase where only techies do it, so relying on orange XML and RSS buttons that spew XML when clicked just doesn’t cut it.
The feed protocol aims to simplify this mess so that clicking on a feed:// link enables quick subscription via the user’s feed reader. I’m hoping more applications – and more web sites – support this protocol so that we can put the days of subscribing by URL copy/pasting behind us.
PS: Yes, I know we should be able to rely on MIME types for all of this, but MIME types don’t work.