Expert Texture Home Contact me About Subscribe Digipede Connect on LinkedIn rwandering on Twitter

Expert Texture

The blogged wandering of Robert W. Anderson

IE7 and RSS

I’ve played around with IE7 a little. It completely hijacks RSS. For example, clicking directly on my RSS feed link on my blog normally gives you the nicely formatted FeedBurner view. I like this view: it looks good and explains RSS to novices. It also lists several readers that a user might want to use for reading RSS. IE7 gives a different view (i.e., the IE7 Feed reader), of course gives you no options, and asks if you want to subscribe to the feed.

Of course, this is probably a benefit to IE7-only subscribers since the unsubscribed / subscribed views are virtually identical.

I could find no way to import OPML into the reader, ensuring that I wouldn’t really try it out. I also could find no way to export OPML. Maybe this is hidden somewhere in some common Feed tools, but I couldn’t find them. OPML can be imported / exported using the Import / Export wizard — clicking on the “+” icon brings up the menu from which to select this (I guess I was blinded by the strange / docking / undocking behavior of the Favorites pane).

The IE7 blog talks about the “OPML game” and how this new Windows RSS Platform solves this problem.

Dave Winer points to an article that discusses this very “problem” of importing / exporting OPML. He wonders if the author believes that people only run software on their desktop.

Don’t worry, Dave, I’m sure that Microsoft will sync the subscriptions with Microsoft Live! ;)

Tags: , , ,

Windows Live Messenger Invitations

As you may know, Windows Live Messenger is in an invitation-only beta. I can’t imagine this is terribly exclusive, but I have some extra invitations.

There is information about Live Messenger here. I will say that it is, by default, more orange than the previous one. This is a great benefit. Unlike Michael Arrington, I like the color orange.

If you would like one, contact me through this form: Contact Me.

Note: I have no more invitations!

Tags: ,