That feed icon

Subtitle: Boring weblogging minutiæ no one cares about. Subsubtitle: Redundant qualifications. Where was I? Ah, yes.

There has been some pondering about that orange blob lately.

Here’s what I did on plasmasturm.org:

a[type="application/atom+xml"] {
  color: #fb0;
  padding-left: 22px;
  background: transparent url(/img/feed.png) no-repeat 4px 80%;
}

Which implies that I think this icon should be used solely for links that point to actual feeds. In the crazed rush to adopt it, people seem to be slapping it on just about every link that somehow has something to do with feeds; looks like a fashion fad and I think it’s wrong.

Further, I labelled my link to my feed “Subscribe” rather than “Feed” (or “Newsfeed”). I know that’s a verb and not a noun, and I don’t like that either. However, until “feed” is as ubiquitously understood as “homepage” is today, I’ll advocate the use of “Subscribe,” as the term is self-explanatory. Popular choices like “RSS,” “XML,” “Atom,” “Syndicate” or “Syndication” fail even harder than “Feed.”

Lastly, on a fussy note, I poached the icon from Firefox. I don’t know about everyone else, but I find the one championed by feedicons.com much uglier.