Why did Apple integrate RSS support into Safari instead of Mail?
One interesting announcement coming out of WWDC this year was RSS support in Safari. I wonder if this means Apple employees will start blogging more? :-) I'm a bit surprised they chose to integrate this support into Safari instead of Mail. I find it very natural to extend mail clients to support RSS. I read feeds much like mailing lists, and want the same sorts of features as an email client. I want to be able to group things into folders. I want a list of posts where I can see the author, date, etc and can sort/group. I want a preview pane. I want powerful searching and organization. I want all of these same features for my email. I'm a quite happy user of Newsgator, which lets me read my feeds in Outlook and use Outlook's powerful features to organize the posts. The Mac OS X news reader Pulp Fiction is inspired by Apple's Mail application, although it's not integrated into Apple's application (I don't think Mail is extenisble enough to allow that). I don't think I totally understand Safari's RSS support from the bit of press I've seen about it, so maybe I just don't get it.
Comments
- Anonymous
July 12, 2004
They extended Safari to include RSS because it was probably easier to start with. Plus, Apple has extended NSXML to include XQuery goodness, so it was relatively easy to render RSS content into a WebView (read <a href="http://www.livejournal.com/users/giant_moose/17395.html">this</a> for more). They can then gauge the effectiveness of a simple RSS reader in the platform, determine if it's providing customer value and then decided to migrate to a more feature-rich implementation. Personally, I'm looking forward to a nice little Dashboard widget for consuming RSS feeds. - Anonymous
July 12, 2004
I'm with you. But they might "get it right", as a web page is where you first contact the feed. More at http://nostatic.com/blog/ - Anonymous
July 12, 2004
Personally, I like browser-based readers better. I like to experience my syndicated feeds in a weblog format, rather than in my email. Feed Demon pulls this off very well for a Windows App, but I prefer BlogLines.com.
Of course with mail, you already have a storage system capable of handling lots of items. Where do the items go in Safari? It looks like it may just download the feeds brand new each time, without remembering which items are new to you. - Anonymous
July 12, 2004
IMHO it was done to speed development of apps for next generation of processors. - Anonymous
July 12, 2004
To me, mail is not a good metaphor for reading mailing lists, Usenet, and RSS. I prefer the very flexible viewing, threading, and grouping options provided by some of the best Web-based discussion forums or newsreaders. Not just that, but with so many feeds providing Web links, it seems natural for the RSS to simply be another browser tab.
The last thing I want is for each feed item to look like a mail message. Even on the mailing lists I subscribe to, if they provide a Web interface where I can view entire threads on one page and simply keep hitting the space bar to scroll down, that's usually more convenient.
I want my mail to be about personal messaging, not content browsing. Leave the browsing to the browser. - Anonymous
July 12, 2004
It sounds like you don't use an email client with flexible viewing, threading and grouping. It sounds like we agree that we want to read RSS feeds somewhere with these features. I also want to read email somewhere with the features. - Anonymous
July 12, 2004
I'm quite happy with NetNewsWire, Even the Lite version I use lets me quickly chase down interesting items. NNW more nearly resembles Mail's interface, with its 3-pane setup: mailboxes=sources(in folder heirarchy); headlines; and details (if any).
But Safari seems to be run by a charismatic, connected, talented individual, while mail has a corporate, vote-which-features-to-fix leadenness. Time-saving, and relatively easy features to add -- such as how NNW can link to Safari in a page that opens BEHIND NNW, so I can keep scanning headlines while the particular item loads -- never appear in Mail. As a result, I would not trust Apple to upgrade it for a new set of metaphors. - Anonymous
July 12, 2004
Well, I use Apple Mail, and still use Eudora as a redundant backup mail system. Both have serious flaws. I should probably look around at other clients, but Apple Mail currently does more of what I want than anything else.
For RSS, I really like NetNewsWire Lite.
Which mail client do you use? - Anonymous
July 12, 2004
Entourage on the Mac, and Outlook on Windows. - Anonymous
July 12, 2004
Not one made by Microsoft... Actually I use NOTHING from the aforementioned company... - Anonymous
July 12, 2004
Umm, this blog is from Microsoft. You are using something from Microsoft right now. You may need to take a shower now. - Anonymous
July 12, 2004
Having never tried using RSS feeds before, I'm the perfect candidate to use RSS is Safari. I don't get it.
Reading feeds using a web browser isn't much different or time saving than just going to the normal web page itself. Now to me having it integrated into Mail makes A LOT of sense. All my news feeds would be there in one folder, threaded together by site and I don't have to navigate anywhere to read them. - Anonymous
July 13, 2004
A few thoughts - the whole WebKit integration. If Apple enables RSS support in Safari, they'll probably more place it in their WebKit package allowing any web enabled app to make use of RSS feeds. As such, Mail would in theory with an appropriate plugin, have support for RSS feeds.
So, from a programming/extensibility standpoint, I can see why they'd put it in Safari vs. Mail. But, I'd imagine it wouldn't be that hard to extend. Or, here's another thought. Why not create an RSS feed server process that aggregates the feeds from various sites based upon a "setup" folder, and then generates groups or other things in an IMAP folder, giving you essentially the same thing as an RSS feed, but in email format. Actually, after having just mentioned this, I think I might have to look at creating such an app.... - Anonymous
July 14, 2004
Opera has RSS support baked in now and I love it. You see an orange XML button/link, you click it, the feed opens in a new tab. It's great. After doing it a few times, I began thinking that is THE way it should be done, no other way makes much sense to me now.
However, Opera baked RSS in via the built-in mail client, so they covered all their bases.