This post originated from an RSS feed registered with .NET Buzz by Greg Reinacker. Original Post: Subscriptions with feed:// Feed Title: Greg Reinacker's Weblog Feed URL: http://sedoparking.com/search/registrar.php?domain=®istrar=sedopark Feed Description: Greg Reinacker's Weblog Latest .NET Buzz Posts Latest .NET Buzz Posts by Greg Reinacker Latest Posts From Greg Reinacker's Weblog

Pete Hopkins (here, here) and Steven Wood (here) are lobbying for support for subscription links in the format

feed://http://example.org/rss.xml

Steven even posted the necessary registry entries for Internet Explorer to wire up an application to respond to a user clicking a link like this. So, for example, NewsGator could add a subscription whenever a user clicks on a feed:// link.

This seems like a reasonable idea to me...with the obvious benefit that a user could just click on the link, and the aggregator could add a subscription to the feed. As opposed to the situation today, where if the user clicks on a feed link, they'll see (at best) a page full of XML. Now of course they can right-click on an existing link, and select "Subscribe in NewsGator", but supporting a left-click subscription as well might be nice.

Other aggregators support a subscription link in a format like http://localhost:5678/..., but I dislike the idea of applications listening on certain ports like this. The feed:// idea is much more attractive, IMHO.

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