Staff: For a web browser, figuring out feeds is hard. That’s why, after Firefox 2 decompresses a web page suspected feed, the data is checked “based on the heuristic defined in Microsoft’s Windows RSS Publisher’s Guide,” a guidance on, among other things, how to build feeds that work with IE 7 and Windows Vista:

When a user clicks on a link in a page, IE7 applies the following process to determine whether to use display the file using the feed preview.
  1. IE checks the HTTP Content-Type header provided by the web server. If the HTTP Content-Type header of the file indicates that it is for an application that can handle feeds, IE applies its feed preview on the feed file.
  2. Some content types are generic XML or RDF content-types which may be feed files. In the case, IE will scan the first 512 bytes looking for common identifiers of feeds. If these identifiers are found, IE will apply its feed preview.

The specific Content-Types to use vary based on the feed format. There are multiple feed formats that IE7 supports: RSS 2.0 (0.91 and 0.92 included), Atom 1.0, and RSS 1.0.

As Firefox 2 lead engineer Ben Goodger says, “For web content interoperability, copying is good.”

The man makes sense. Think there’s any chance he’d consider taking over the Patent Office?

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