Saturday, November 5th, 2005, 12:58 pm
Vista/IE7 Only to Support Valid Feeds
FeedLounge: one among many (Web)
applications which tolerate invalid feeds
HEER hypocrisy is the only way one can describe the latest statement from Microsoft’s RSS team. Microsoft have broken and ignored many International standards over the years. This caused many application to malfunction even when they stuck with standards. Now, when matters do not suit them, Microsoft decide to say farewell to feeds that are not well-formed XML [rel="nofollow"]. Many projects, even the tiniest among them, have tolerated malformed RSS feeds. Yet, this appear to be too much to ask from biggest standards-breaking criminal of all.
Potentially, Windows Vista and Internet Explorer 7 will simply refuse to handle anything that does not adhere to or complies with standards. Need I even mention that Microsoft are set to ‘extend’ RSS, thus breaking RSS protocols?
Our years of experience in with HTML in Internet Explorer have taught us the long-term pain that results from being too liberal with what you accept from others. Hence, we%u2019ve adopted the following overriding principle for IE 7 and RSS platform in Windows Vista:
We will only support feeds that are well-formed XML.