Sunday, September 30, 2007
Google Reader broken
Google reader seems to have got an upgrade yesterday. I noticed the links to other services being added on the top-left corner of the page. Apart from this, there were no UI or functionality changes.
But, upgrade probably included some back end changes, especially in the feed parsing engine. The article links from NYT feed are no longer clickable.
My gut feel is they probably modified the feed parser to accommodate some crappy feeds graciously. Even though RSS and Atom are touted as "standards" for feed publishing, there are just too many tags being added by all and sundry. Publishers are taking the X part of XML little too seriously (X stands for eXtensible.)
The html standard went into the trash can when Microsoft implemented its own version and then looked up the W3 standards. But, since IE was a dominant browser and it did a fine job of handling all the broken html (generated by its own Frontpage Express), nobody felt the need to write clean html. If my limited experience with RSS is anything to go by, RSS is headed for the same fate as html. (You got to tweak the off-the-shelf parser to handle some nasty feeds.) The RSS parsers would be ridiculously complex with parser handling all the whims of a major publisher. It would be sad if RSS meets early death due to its inherent strength of extensibility as RSS is picking up as primary medium of content publishing on web.
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But, upgrade probably included some back end changes, especially in the feed parsing engine. The article links from NYT feed are no longer clickable.
My gut feel is they probably modified the feed parser to accommodate some crappy feeds graciously. Even though RSS and Atom are touted as "standards" for feed publishing, there are just too many tags being added by all and sundry. Publishers are taking the X part of XML little too seriously (X stands for eXtensible.)
The html standard went into the trash can when Microsoft implemented its own version and then looked up the W3 standards. But, since IE was a dominant browser and it did a fine job of handling all the broken html (generated by its own Frontpage Express), nobody felt the need to write clean html. If my limited experience with RSS is anything to go by, RSS is headed for the same fate as html. (You got to tweak the off-the-shelf parser to handle some nasty feeds.) The RSS parsers would be ridiculously complex with parser handling all the whims of a major publisher. It would be sad if RSS meets early death due to its inherent strength of extensibility as RSS is picking up as primary medium of content publishing on web.
Larger image
Labels: google
# posted by Shashikant Kore : 4:21 AM
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