Web In Depth

It’s very important as a user not to get confused and more importantly scared of RSS. This can happen if you have been introduced to all the different versions flying around. But take heart, there’s no need to panic and I’ll let you in on this right now because as far as end users are concerned it really doesn’t matter what format the web site use and most of the time you won’t even know, which is pretty good. So now that I have put your minds at rest let me outline all these differences and what they mean.

To really delve in to this topic I need to briefly look at the History of Syndication.

This all started somewhere in between 1995 and 1997. First of all Ramanathan V. Guha at Netscape with the backing of Tim Bray developed RDF by combining a technology he build while in Apple (MDF) with XML. RDF stands for Resource Description Framework. In 1997 Dave winner build a web syndication format to use with his web log.

Netscape developers’ introduces the first web syndication format called RSS standing for RDF Site Summary. And guess what it was developed using RDF (big surprise) and they called it RSS 0.9(why 0.9? nobody knows anymore) There intention was to use this in the new portal site Netscape was building to syndicate news feeds from major news sites. The issue with RSS 0.9 was it was complicated mainly due to use of RDF, therefore Dan Libby build RSS 0.91 which does not use RDF and which simplifies the format while compromising some feature of 0.9. This time as RDF was no longer used RSS stood for Rich Site Summary.

But some developers’ were not happy with this state of affairs and wanted to build a more functional syndication format that was based on what they consider the true RSS or RSS0.9. So they developed RSS 1.0 based on RDF with more features than RSS 0.9 and we went back to calling RSS as RDF Site Summary. As the usual case with these kind of things others including Dave winner supported simplification of RSS and they developed several new versions of RSS based on RSS0.91 like RSS 0.92 RSS 0.93 RSS 0.94 which culminated in 2002 as RSS 2.0 and Dave made it clear that it stood for Really Simple Syndication. Whew!! That’s a lot of formats called RSS. How much exactly, well 7 versions and no doubt you are confused (I know I was when I first found out).

How do we know which one to subscribe too?

Well luckily there is no hassle when subscribing as all readers support all these types of RSS formats, and sites really don’t tell what there feed is made of expect just telling you feed are available. If you want to know you must open the XML document in the browser and look at the code were it would be specified what type is used. Very rarely you may be given options on what type of feed to subscribe to, in which case choose any thing as it doesn’t make much difference.

So what is the best method?

There is nothing called best method as all serve the same purpose. But keep thee things in mind especially if you want to publish feed yourself

1. RSS 0.92, 0.93, 0.94 are just used to transit from RSS 0.91 to RSS 2.0. So you probably won’t meet or use those. RSS 0.91 can be use as it is very simple. Anybody can learn how to use that, and it is still used by many who don’t see the need to upgrade.
2. As for RS 0.9 well it became obsolete and nobody uses it today, RSS 1.0 is used but not very frequently. But should be considered a great format that allows greater control and features.
3. The most widely used standard is RSS 2.0 and all new applications and site support this. It has both the simplicity of RSS 0.91 plus the additional features it lack.

If you thought this story is over you are wrong. There is one more standard to look at, it is called Atom. RSS did have a slight problem with lot of version, and many felt there was lot of room for further improvement. But in 2003 Dave Winer and his company gave the rights of RSS to Harvard’s Berkman Center for the Internet & Society. What made it impossible for developers to continue to foster the format was the freeze imposed on it by Harvard University which stated “no significant changes can be made and it is intended that future work be done under a different name” Thus a new project was started with the aim of

“100% vendor neutral,”

“Implemented by everybody,”

“Freely extensible by anybody”

“Cleanly and thoroughly specified”

It went forward with different names but was first release as Atom 0.3. Later the project was brought under the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) a standardization body. The Atom 1.0 was published ion December 2005 as a proposed standard by IETF.

From the end users point this still makes no difference and you can consider Atom as just another RSS format.