IE And Mozz Collaborate On RSS Icon

sylverboss writes "The Microsoft Team RSS blog is reporting that IE7 is adopting the RSS icon used in Firefox. They all agreed that it's in the user's best interest to have one common icon to represent RSS and RSS-related features in a browser. The increasing collaborative efforts between the browser vendors in the last few weeks is an honest attempt to create a standard Web interface for everyone, no matter what browser is used."

Good

I hope MS adopt other features. IE will only get better through competing with a stronger player.

Re:Good

Collaberating on a 32x32 (if that) bitmap? Call me a cynic, but I don't give a flying fudge. IE needs to actually adopt features that matter. You know, proper CSS implementation comes to mind... This seems like an instance for Microsoft to say "Hey look, we cooperate! I mean goddamn...that's a nice icon!"

Don't get me wrong, I think it's good that they're collaberating, but call me when they cooperate on something functional.

Re:Good

You think this doesn't matter? It's like the "want of a nail" story. Most people don't know about RSS. Coming up with a standard representation in the browser will allow sites to standardize on the icon. The icon will be seen more frequently, become more familiar, and then with that familiarity the awareness of RSS will increase. This is a good thing. Something small can have a big effect.

Re:Good

Apple use a blue box with the letters 'RSS' in it for RSS feeds. This is a bad idea because:

1. They use RSS for Atom feeds as well, so it's not even accurate if you are using the IETF standard feed format.
2. The average user has no more idea what RSS is than they do HTML (probably less). It's just another acronym.

The Mozilla icon isn't great, but it's relatively good and if it becomes a standard then it will help users. Does anyone else remember when Apple had all of the best UI designers?

Re:Good

So how is it that, despite the Opera, MSIE, Netscape, Firefox and Mozilla icons all looking completely different, people still manage to get onto the web?

Besides, anyone interested in RSS is savvy enough to know the acronym without the need for a pretty standardized icon.

Re:Good

call me when they cooperate on something functional

What sort of thing? Stuff like

• Support for alpha channel transparency in PNG? [msdn.com]
• Fixing their support for CSS 2? [msdn.com]
• Improving support for HTTPS? [msdn.com]
• Improvements in caching and decompression? [msdn.com]
• Implementing developer tools? [msdn.com]
• Improving the user interface for secure browsing? [msdn.com]
• Collaborating with the Web Standards Project to improve Microsoft products? [webstandards.org]

Microsoft have been justly lambasted over the past few years for their failure to keep IE up to date, but (perhaps prompted by the success of Firefox) they are now doing real work to improve matters, and this has been accompanied by an unprecendented degree of openness and clarity. Time will tell just how much they achieve on their promises, but it's clearly wrong to suggest that this rather trivial piece of news is all that's been happening over the past year.

If you're really interested in functional improvements made by Microsoft then rather than waiting for us to call you, you could try subscribing to a few feeds. Here's one to get you started: IEBlog [msdn.com] (Atom 0.3).

(Oh no, I defended Microsoft; there goes 8 years of karma... :-)

Re:Good

Obviously you've never had to do the trick of using IE's icon for the Firefox shortcut on someone else's computer because they just don't understand web pages without clicking on that big blue e.

Re:Good

Doesn't look like collaboration to me... last time I checked it takes two to collaborate, whereas here Microsoft is merely following Mozilla's lead...

Re:Good

Collaberating on a 32x32 (if that) bitmap? Call me a cynic, but I don't give a flying fudge.

Come on. It's a 32bit RGBA image, 32 by 32 pixels. That means it could have been (2^32)*32*32 - 1 = 4,398,046,511,103 other things. But they chose that one. That has to mean something.

And here I thought

that competition between standards [slashdot.org] were good.

Re:And here I thought

How is that a double standard? They didn't patch it to break the DRM, they patched it because it broke their OS.

Collaboration?

I wouldn't call it that. IE's trying to share the icon with Mozilla, so when IE7 comes out, it's easier for Mozilla users to migrate back to IE.

Re:Collaboration?

Come on, it's a damn icon! 28x28 pixels, thats it. Don't too read much into it.

Re:Collaboration?

That could be. A common interface for applications does quite a bit for user-portability. Mozilla and Firefox, for instance, have long had near identical rendering. As Firefox started gaining momentum, some people (I seem to remember Scott Finney of www.scotsnewsletter.com fame claiming a difference in near-1.0 days) claimed differences, but if existant at all, they were certainly not what held back Firefox converts. No, the interface similarities between Firefox and Internet Explorer are what allowed FF to succeed where Mozilla (suite) failed.

IE still has an enormous bulk of users, but those they've lost are power users and web developers. Web developers, more than anyone, are the ones who have controlled browser success. They're not OSS fanboys, they are the ones that want the best working conditions available. They took IE4 over Netscape 4, and FF over IE6. They have no issue reverting to IE if IE resumes its best-of-category status.

But these are also the people who couldn't convert to FF until it was IE-like enough. And now that they've adopted to FF conventions, IE needs to be sufficently FF-like to allow their return. These are the people who use things like RSS, and anyone new to the scene that knows ANYTHING is going to default to FF at this point. Therefore, Microsoft has nothing to lose by conceeding RSS to Firefox. They won't get any new users locked into their approach and existing users want it a certain way.

Oh yeah!

That's a FAR more important issue than, say, intrepreting W3-standards in one common way amongst all browsers. Really. I'm glad they cooperate in fields that tremendously important.

Re:Oh yeah!

All long walks starts with a modest first step. If this open the door (or at least, gives the hint that is possible) to more/bigger/fundamental collaborations, then is something to be happy about.

Great Scott the Inovation is Amazing!!

In other News, IE 7 will utilize Mozilla's Tabber Browsing, Improved Pop-up Blocker and security model... ... In-house inovation from microsoft includes... um.... um.... An improved looking Blue E. More details to follow.

Re:Great Scott the Inovation is Amazing!!

... We at MS also would like to introduce the blue screen of happiness! Yes, you can enjoy pictures of flowers comfortable music while you muse on the hours of work you just lost.

In other news. . .

sales of down-filled parkas skyrocketed in hell, Israel and Palestine agreed to merge and form one country under UN supervision and evangelical christians in the United States, along with the Vatican, admitted that Christmas should more properly be celebrated sometime in the summer.

Now that they're talking

Do some benchmarks and test out each browser on all levels, html display, exploitability, memory footprint, etc. Last browser standing wins!

Or we could just agree on similar icons.... *yawn*

Helpful hint:

Embrace: The company publicly announces that they are going to support a standard. They assign an employee or employees to work with the standards bodies, such as the W3C and the IETF.

Extend: They do support the standard, at least partially, but start adding company-only extensions of the standard to their products. They argue that they are trying only to add value for their customers, who want them to provide these features.

Extinguish: Through various means, such as driving use of their extended standard through their server products and developer tools, they increase use of the proprietary extensions to the point that competitors who do not follow the company version of the standard cannot compete. The company standard then becomes the only standard that matters in practical terms (a de facto standard), and it allows the company to control the industry by controlling the standard.

Re:Helpful hint:

Yeah, I can see it now. Over time they'll add bits of red and yellow shading to the orange icon. They'll change the level of anti-aliasing a little bit, and maybe slightly adjust the radius of the rounded corners. After a year or two, they'll add drop shadows, and before you know it, no one will regognize the original orange and white icon used in Firefox and Opera and all of the other browsers that agreed to follow Microsoft into this standard. Everyone will be locked into the new and improved Microsoft version.

Meanwhile, Dave Winer will be somewhere saying "See, I told you that you should have just used an orange rectangle with the letters 'XML'. But would you listen to me? NO! And now Microsoft has gone and emrace-and-extended your precious litle radio icon. I hope you're happy!"

Switchers

Pessimists will say that it will make it more likely for people to switch back to IE, but for people like my parents, now that they've got Firefox, they really like it and are unlikely to go back. However, switching from one to the other leads inevitably to "what does this symbol mean" here and there - and if that's eliminated, then it makes it even easier for me to move people to firefox, because it's not that radically different from what they used to see.

What about innovation?

I'm worried that conformity in this issue area will reduce competition and stifle innovation.

Yay! :)

Now could the office teams please agree on a file format?
Pretty please?
Pretty please with sugar on top?

alternatives..

Honestly I think it's great that IE and Mozilla are "working together" on this one. However, having read the original posts some months back when the IE team was still deciding on an icon to use, they really didn't present a better alternative. What they did have was a mozilla-esque RSS feed icon and users were very happy to point out the similarities between the two. Out of the 5 or so icons they presented, the one that really seemed to catch on was the one that was most like Mozilla.

The icon just seems to work, and I applaud their decision to use it.

Engadget look alike

And the Mozilla button looks an awful lot like the Engadget logo.

I've got it!

-----
|RSS|
-----

There you go, mock that baby up in photoshop and we're good to go!

Could they would they...

I wonder if MS is considering opening IE or possibly even giving up on development of it. While you might fall over laughing at that and think "Oh, just another OSS fan boy" here's my reasoning. There is nothing left to fight for in the browser war. MS used the browser to get Windows on every desktop. They have done that now. They won, so why maintain their weapon (IE). In fact just look at the situation they have got themselves into. They didn't want to maintain IE so for x (7 IIRC) years they have just not really touched it. If FF hadn't come along I doubt they would have ever touched it again. After all, it didn't directly make them any money. What good it did to their bottom line had already been done. Personally, I think this update to IE is an egg on face stopper rather than a real update. Once they have done this update they then have a good two or three years to announce that they will no longer be updating IE. The great thing about that from MS's point of view is that they can abandon IE without loosing face.

What would be great is if they stopped development of IE and put some effort into FF. After all they are likely to be playing catch up for ever against FF simply because of the way it is developed and released. The only thing that would stop MS from doing this is pride. They won't admit that OSS can actually produce decent software.

Re:Could they would they...

Your argument assumes that FF is better than IE. For most users, it may not be. And it may not be for anybody whose not a idealogically bound to OSS, or obsessed with tabs.

Personally, I just uninstalled FF earlier this week after getting fed up with its inability to load pages consistently. For reasons I can't fathom, even with default settings, FF will sometimes hang on pages that don't load fast enough. IE, on the other hand, is very robust in this regard. I miss the tabs, but I really like having pages always come up.

Yes, I filed a bug report. It was dismissed arrogantly with the statement "millions of people have no problem with FF." I wasn't the only person who filed such a report, either.

Re:Could they would they...

Perhaps you should think about who it is that is stuck in 'obsession'.

Woah. I love tabs. I just don't like them blank.

Was it a firefox issue? Did you test the same sites with firefox on other machines?

Of course it's a Firefox issue. That's self evident if you drop your defensive knee-jerking for a minute. If you install software and it doesn't work, it is, by definition, that software that is the problem. Perhaps it's understandable that FF has problems given the sorry nature of Windows networking, but that doesn't change the fact that I, and others, have had problems with Firefox on machines where IE works fine. Part of writing software is working around problems with the OS you're targeting. Everybody knows that but OSS people, who regularly project their faults on the OS in lieu of QC. The bottom line is IE works on every machine I have, but FF has occasional problems on most every machine I use, from linux to windows.

It seems like you have a nasty habit of externalizing your own character flaws into the outside world.

Damn. You're either the world's greatest psychologist or the worst hypocrite. You may be projecting the projecting, chief. I just uninstalled it. You're psychoanalysing it. Which one of us has the issue? I don't care that FF sucked for me. I have nothing invested in OSS or commericial software. I was just telling what happened to me. However, I do appreciate it every time somebody from /. decides to read my fortune from one paragraph I write about a fucking html browser. Listen: not everybody has their identity caught up in the software they choose to use. So when I insult the guys who spend countless hours developing FF without compensation and only manage to produce something of comparable bloatness and bugginess to IE, I mention this fact with a detachment that is probably hard for some people here to understand. Don't mistake the extremity of my position for passion about the cause. I really don't care if FF fails or succeeds. I do, however, find mild amusement in calling BS when I see it. And the idea that FF is god's answer to the browser is wrong both in premise and in fact.

I suggested the FF guys were arrogant not because I'm sure I'm right, but because they didn't even bother to find out either way. No respectable company would act that way. There were more than a few of us who were submitting bugs about pages not loading, and we were all dismissed out of hand since there are, evidently, millions of downloads without problems. Intellectually honest developers would at least be curious about the issue. The FF guys were almost reactionary with their dismissal. I thought I was helping them with their project, but I was treated like a guy taking a shit in the middle of a party. It was pretty enlightening to me about their mindset, and I thought it would be interesting for people here. Or at least the ones with some objectivity left.

Anyway, this only makes me arrogant if I'm wrong. And it only makes me obsessed if I think about this for more than a minute after hitting "submit." And believe me, I don't. I argue about software for the same reason most people argue about sports. It fun to do when there's nothing else to do.

Re:Could they would they...

What would be great is if they stopped development of IE and put some effort into FF. After all they are likely to be playing catch up for ever against FF simply because of the way it is developed and released. The only thing that would stop MS from doing this is pride.

Microsoft have positioned Internet Explorer as a way of writing in-house applications for years. They support all kinds of quirks and non-standard behaviour like HTAs etc that Gecko, KHTML, etc don't have to.

It's more than pride stopping Microsoft from switching to Gecko; all their big customers who've bought into their marketing and built in-house applications that require this stuff would scream bloody murder if the rug was pulled out from under them.

In order to let Internet Explorer die, they'd have to transition these customers to something else. The two main contenders are XAML and XUL. XAML isn't quite ready yet, and Microsoft won't undermine it by switching their customers to XUL, will they?

You have to understand that Longhorn was supposed to be done by now. These customers should already be switching in mass numbers. But Longhorn has been delayed for so long that Microsoft's strategy has hit a roadblock because Internet Explorer isn't cutting the mustard any more, and people are looking at alternatives like XUL.

Re:Could they would they...

MS used the browser to get Windows on every desktop. They have done that now. They won, so why maintain their weapon (IE).

You have this one point completely backwards and so the rest of your argument is moot.

Windows was already on every desktop when they released IE to compete with Netscape Navigator. They used the fact that Windows was everywhere in order to get *IE* everywhere, not the other way around!

Great News

Now we can really stick it to Safari for using that goofy blue RSS icon. What was Apple thinking?

Works -For- Firefox, not against it

Consider this if the IE team chose a vastly different icon:

IE is the dominant browser. The people who are most likely to be using Internet Explorer are also the people who are most likely to not realize that Firefox might have originally created the icon or even care about it.

All they will see is that when their friends try to switch them to this "newcomer" browser, it uses a different icon and poor old IE user gets confused and don't feel like switching. The less barriers, the less little things that add up, the lower the learning curve for people to switch. While it might not seem like much, these things pile on top of each other for someone who only knows IE as "the internet" and was not previously aware that there is something else out there.

Don't Share For Free!!!

While I think this is a 'good thing' for all concerned, I would not be sharing that icon for free. Microsoft should be required to license it from the Moz folks. I'm not talking anything uber-subtantial, but a reasonable donation for the rights to use this icon should be something the parties can figure out together. Sorry, but as an IT Director, I see how much money Microsoft sucks out of my company, and I think it only fair and rational for our friends at Mozilla to benefit from this. Pete

Re:Don't Share For Free!!!

That kind of thinking is what annoys me when people say "imagine how much money Tim Berners Lee would have if he'd charged for the WWW instead of giving it away!" It's nonsense. The WWW would never have caught on if it wasn't free.

And, if Mozilla.org tried to charge Microsoft for the icon, Microsoft would have told them to fuck off, and used their own. I'm pretty sure the world's largest software corporation can come up with one little icon by themselves.

That way, everyone loses. Microsoft don't get to use the icon they want, Firefox looks more unfamiliar to users coming from Internet Explorer, and the users have a marginally steeper learning curve when they want to switch in either direction.

The bottom line is that some things are only valuable if they are free. This is one of those times.

So will IE get XUL?

The increasing collaborative efforts between the browser vendors in the last few weeks is an honest attempt to create a standard Web interface for everyone, no matter what browser is used.

So, does this mean IE7 will support XUL? Because that'd be really cool. Being able to create rich web apps using XUL would be nice.

Oh, wait, but if they supported XUL, then no one would need their XAML. So I suppose that's still just a dream...

Mozz?

Are you sure it's Mozzilla they're collaborating with? Maybe MS is really branching out and collaborating with this company [mozzco.com].

Win-win for Microsoft

Their art department doesn't have to waste time and money developing their own icon and they get credit for "working together".

Why stop there?

Why stop at the RSS symbol, why not just adopt the entire browser?

I mean, what is the point in Microsoft having its own web browser when there is a free and open alternative (other than to steer users away from free and open cross-platform standards)?

They took a trip to talk about an icon?

...so in November, Amar and I took a visit down to Silicon Valley...

A trip....from Washington...to California...for an icon? I wish I could make trips around the country for such trivial purposes.

How about this instead?

----
From: [e-mail]
To: [e-mail]
Subject: RSS icon

You: RSS icon.
We: Need RSS icon.

We coo?

-Jane

----
From: [e-mail]
To: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: RSS icon

Sure.

-John

----

Honestly, 800+ miles to talk about a 28x28 pixel icon. God save their accounting department if they want to collaborate on something like those darn [w3.org] pesky [w3.org] standards [wikipedia.org].

Money solves everything

Once Microsoft started making web-apps one of their core strategies, browser compatibility immediately came to the forefront. Why? Because they looked at the trends. Eventually, Joe Public will wonder why everyone is using that Firefox thing, and will want to know how they can use it. Microsoft can't sell web-apps effectively, especially to the consumer level, if IE is the only browser that supports them. They would be alienating a huge amount of potential customers (the Mac users, or Linux users, or just windows users tired of IE shooting themselves in the foot), and considering that group is only growing, they must have realized it's just a plain stupid move.

So in other words, they'll only cooperate insofar as it helps their web-app strategy. Will we see XUL in IE? Nope, because they won't be making anything with XUL, and thus it would only help the competition. There's the trick right there; find a way for microsoft to make money and you'll spur them into action every time.

Collaborate or adopt?

You decide.

Great, but what about Firefox themes

Sounds like a great idea, but Firefox and Mozilla themes usually replace the RSS/Atom/feed icon with something that matches that theme. I mean, I know that IE doesn't support themeing yet (AFAIK), but what's the big deal about having the same icon?

In other news

In other news, Microsoft (MSFT) reported today that they are boosted earnings estimates by 0.00000000047 cents per share for the current quarter. Chief Financial Officer Christopher Liddell indicated that the earnings boost arises from a reduction in expenses made possible by a collaborative effort with the Mozilla Foundation to create a new standard logo for RSS feeds.

It's cool but...

It looks like a singnal strength indicator. In fact (besides being orange) it looks like the icon my weather radio alarm clock thing uses to show atmoic time sync singal. Wtf does the icon have to do with an RSS feed?

No spin zone needed!

Some Microsoft developers post a few icons on their blog. Many blog comments express that they like icon #4 (which is what is already used in Mozilla). Icon #4 is adopted. How does this get spun into collaboration? Geez. Granted they 'met' with some folks at Mozilla, but I'm sure only so MS could get 30 pages of legal documents signed to agree they are allowed to use the icon.

This is nuts

You know, I wish when I story was rejected, you could see who was the person who rejected it.
2005-12-15 16:29:46 Standarized RSS Icon For Mozilla and IE 7 (Developers,Mozilla) (rejected)

In other news

Microsoft trademarks, patents, and copyrights the RSS icon.

Never ever trust in Microsoft

If I take a quick look on history Microsoft already cooperated with IBM on OS/2 and later with Sun on Java.

And we all know how these cooperations ended.

embrace, extend and extinguish

That is just another thing that microsoft will embrace, extend and extinguish.

How they going to pull off that one I don know thought ...

... incompatible color? ... hum no ...
... a proprietary bit in each pixel? ... hum ...

well I'm sure they're gonna find a way ...

Collaborate or gank?

It's not really a collaboration; Microsoft just chose to use Firefox's feed icon. Now, the real question is: does using the icon, which is under the MPL, require Microsoft to do anything different? (Like, if they modify it.)

"Collaborate"?

Since when is "we'll just use yours!" collaboration?

-g.

Tail Lights?

This is just another example of a cumbersome commercial developer chasing Free/Open Source Software developer's tail lights [catb.org].

-Peter

Im glad to see this

It is about time. I can't count the number of times I have gone to a site that only works under one browser, and one OS. Why should you have to have a specific OS to visit a website? That is quite insane to write a broken website like that. One example is the Agent login on budgetphone.com, it doesn't work at all.

If it works under firefox, then 99 percent of the time it will work under IE, with the exception of CSS pages. Hey, Im on a Mac, and I prefer using Firefox over Safari, or IE.

I love the RSS features on Firefox, along with the plugins you can use to manage them. Hopefully we will see MS incorporate RSS into their OS in some way as we have seen Apple do it with Tiger, like the RSS screensaver that displays Slashdot headlines. Hopefully MS won't create their 'own' proprietary so called standards then try to take it over.

So this means ....

They'll use a standard icon to represent something which they won't implement in a standard way?

Of what benefit is this to anyone??

NOw, if they implemented it in a compatible way, I'd say a compatible icon makes sense. But this seems to me to be complying with the wrong standard, while knowing they'll bust the right one.

The posted summary is wrong

The posted summary is wrong. It says:

They all agreed that it's in the user's best interest

This is Slashdot. Here we use "it's" to mean the possesive, and "its" to mean "it is". Please keep this in mind.

bad design!!! They should use "RSS" (the letters)

I don't get why Microsoft thinks "RSS" would be more confusing than "dot with quarter circles". Just use "RSS" like Safari does, make it blue, orange, whatever.

When I first saw that icon I didn't have any idea what it meant.. I thought it meant "connected to the internet". It's WAY too subtle and doesn't convey ANYTHING. At least "RSS" is the *name* of the technology.

Microsoft just doesn't have a fucking clue about usability. Do you really think people are even going to see that icon? It's just more noise on the screen. My computer illiterate mom knows what RSS is, but doesn't even notice the orange icon.

And if you are one of those geniuses who thinks "OH NO, TEH RSS IS CONFUSING LOL!" think about the following: DVD, VHS, CNN...? PEOPLE CAN REMEMBER ACRONYMS. And they can use them to ask questions like "hey computer guy, what's RSS mean?"..

Let's not standardize on a tiny, meaningless icon, please.

GPL'ed!!

What the Mozilla team failed to mention is that the usage will actually force IE7 to be GPL'ed. Suckers!!

Mozz?

Why Mozz? It's Mozilla, not Mozzilla.

But wait a second.

Didn't Microsoft just say that two standards are better than one?

Or maybe they have a double-standard about that, too...

It's 1997 all over again..

When pressed, IE developers admitted that this might not end with RSS icons. "We just have trouble coming up with any ideas of our own period," they were quoted as saying. "Yesterday it was tabbed browsing, today it's an RSS icon.. who knows, maybe one day we'll implement stability."

worried

The increasing collaborative efforts between the browser vendors in the last few weeks is an honest attempt to create a standard Web interface for everyone, no matter what browser is used.

worryingly naive... need correction as follows:

honest (sic) attempt (sic) to create (sic) a standard (sic) Web (sic) interface for everyone (sic) no matter (sic) what browser (sic) is used.

Next...

IE and Mozilla collaborate on integrating IE CSS bugs in Firefox to improve page rendering consistency.

Standard Web Interface?

"an honest attempt to create a standard Web interface for everyone, no matter what browser is used."

Standardising the trappings of the browser isn't what the Web is about. It's about common protocols and formats, not UIs, and trying to lock people into kind of viewport onto the Web will just lead to more browser wars and disenfranchised users (e.g., mobile, screen readers, etc.) that the Web -- and indeed RSS (!) -- were intended to avoid.

They can agree on an icon, but not a spec??

Figures! =/

Dupe

This article is a dupe from next monday. [slashdot.org]

Radio waves are like speed holes

Just as using a blunt instrument to add holes to your car makes it go faster, radio waves make your newsfeeds go faster. It doesn't matter whether you are using a dial-up, cable, wireless or satellite internet connection. It's the radio waves on the icon that make your RSS content go fast. It also means that any news received over RSS is more reliable. After all, we all trust the broadcast media. Radio waves are the definition of credibility.

Re:I propose...

You're just jealous.

Re:I propose...

It takes one to know one. :)

Re:Um...Safari?

A blue "RSS" is only clear to the user if they know what RSS means, and probably 95%+ of Internet users don't.

The orange has become something of a de-facto standard, and the icon Firefox and IE are going to use has the advantage of working just fine for non-english users and no flamewar between the "XML", "RSS", and "FEED" camps.

Re:Um...Safari?

Because the Safari one I've seen says "RSS" which may not translate well into other languages, requiring lots of translating and many *different* icons instead of just one.

Re:Um...Safari?

On the other hand, why should an Atom feed have an RSS icon? The problem with using "RSS" as the label is that it's an implementation detail, not a functional description. It's just like referring to Firefox, Internet Explorer, etc. as "web browsers" rather than "HTML viewers." One describes the function, the other describes the implementation -- which could change (say, by using XML+XSLT instead of HTML+CSS).

FWIW, Opera uses a similar icon to Safari - a white "RSS" on a blue background.

Re:Um...Safari?

Why not work with Apple on this and use the one Safari implements?

Because Apple, instead of using a generic, fairly understandable term like "news feed", chose to jump on the buzzword bandwagon and rebrand Safari as "Safari RSS". Consequently, they have a user-unfriendly acronym instead of a proper icon, which they display even when the news feed isn't RSS at all. That's not suitable for a user-friendly, generic news feed interface, especially when the IETF standard Atom format is displacing the legacy RSS format.

It might have been okay to use "RSS" in a user interface when early adopters were the only people using it, and when RSS was the only format around, but now news feed support is entering the mainstream, and Atom is around too. Using "RSS" buttons isn't appropriate any more.

Re:I propose...

You've got it all wrong - RSS is a pathetic imitation of nerdishness [wordpress.com]. (I'd like to work in a link to Winer's site too, but I have better things to do)

Re:Isn't the pic gpl'ed?

Surely that means their software is now "infected" with GPL? And as such, they must release all related source code!! ;)

Re:Avant Browser

Yes, but the real question is: Does Avant use the Mozilla feed icon? As popular as Avant is, I'm sure Microsoft collaborated with them, too.