Great news from The Guardian UK on the RSS front - full feeds, some custom paths but . . . they are only half the way there from where they could be.

Why not do this, Make better RSS feeds by not making them, ahem.

Don’t get me wrong, I think what the Guardian is doing is taking a step in the right direction but I can’t help but wonder what is taking publishers so looooong to catch on that they have the ability to create small UI enhancements that can make their content completely accessible down to a very granular level. Like to the keyword or phrase level.

Creating multiple prescribed filters and mocking up ways that users can then modify the feeds is a historic FAIL that not only The Guardian falls into but every publisher I have ever seen.

Wake up, nerds!

It’s all the about the UX and making this simple. RSS can be so much more.

To be fair, yes, publisher techs work hard to make feed variety happen but it makes more sense for them to take further steps that can welcome the average user to the party through UI enhancements instead of a list of 25+ feeds.

Here’s a living, breathing example of how even a small blog from one of the world’s largest sewing machine manufacturers does it - Bernina Blog. Sure, it’s more of an advanced operation but with a cleaner UI (I’ve built some and they’re pretty) the content can begin to flow.

Tell me that a publisher like The Guardian UK couldn’t blow out system like this and offer their entire library of content with ease!