And why should I care?

RSS is in my opinion one of the most usefull inventions on the net. It saves me alot of time using RSS instead of hunting for new stories on every news site and blog I read.

But even though I have used RSS for several years I have newer tried to figure out how i works. I’m not interested in the technology behind but in the goals it helps me to accomplish; to notify me every time a site has new material.

Since changing to Firefox 3 I have been kind of puzzled when I want to subscribe to a new RSS-feed. I often have to chooce between several kinds of feeds. (Don’t know if this was the case in FF 2 as well because I didn’t use FF 2)

Firefox is asking me to choose between RSS 2.0, RSS .92 and Atom 0.3. I don’t have a clue what the difference is. But I expect there is a difference since there is a choice. My mental model tells me that the difference might be in the amount of text that will be displayed in the RSS-reader. One will give me the first paragraph and another will give me everything. But I have no idea if this is true.

This is a great example of presenting choices to the user, that the user may not know how to act upon. If there is a difference in what I will get in my RSS-reader depending on what format I choose, describe the difference in words understandable by “average” user like myself. Not in technological terms. If there is no difference at all, don’t give me the choice in the first place.