(no subject)

[arethinn]

Is it really true that Safari doesn't show you any helpful indicator when a page is supplying an RSS feed?? No little orange icon to click? Even IE does that, come on. Am I just blind? Digging around for in-page links just ain't where it's at.

(I'm trying to write instructions for finding and subscribing to feeds using Safari as well as Firefox and IE, if you're wondering why I suddenly seem to be using Safari.)


ETA: Couldn't possibly be the fact that our lab Macs have v.1.3.2 (1.3.7? something © 2005, anyway) on them. *facepalm* Must check what version is on in the staff lab.

Comments

[rhiannasilel.livejournal.com]

Any chance you could get your IT department to just put Firefox on the Macs?

[arethinn]

The project in question stands a good chance of being done on users' home computers, so this is not a solution. It is a self-study type of thing which will have minimal oversight.

[rhiannasilel.livejournal.com]

Actually this would proably help a bit more:

For all other RSS aggregators:
Go to any of our feeds on the RSS Index page and right-click, or if you’re a Mac user control-click, on the orange XML button. Select "copy link," "copy shortcut," or "copy target address." You can also click on the XML button and copy the URL for the address/location bar of the browser. Launch your RSS reader and input the URL that you just copied into the program

I found those instructions by trying to subscribe on the weatherchannel.com's RSS feed from Safari (I never really use Safari on my Mac). At any rate you could probably use that or some variation there of.

[arethinn]

Right, but finding the feed or button in the first place? This version of Safari doesn't seem to be saying "hey! there's a feed somewhere on this page" and you have to go hunting for it, rather than it helpfully displaying this fact in the address or toolbar. I'm trying to explain this to relative greenies. This may not be a valid complaint under other versions of Safari (a quick google seems to indicate beta 3 has rss support more like firefox or IE does). I'll have to get a better grip on the version the targets are likely to be actually trying to use.

[ungarsfragile.livejournal.com]

In safari 3:

1) Blue RSS icon automagically shows up (http://www.plur.ca/images/1.png).

Clicking it reveals:

2) Safari's feed reader loads it up (http://www.plur.ca/images/2.png).

Click "Add Bookmark" will pop up the add window (http://www.plur.ca/images/6.png). Safari refreshes RSS feeds every 15 minutes by default, I think.

[arethinn]

Well, I can hope for Safari 3 then. OTOH, the type of people liable to be interested in this class are not the sort of folks who are interested in keeping up with latest betas and whatnot.