Feed enhancement specialist Feedburner have just decided to adopt the orange feed icon which was recently endorsed by Microsoft, introduced by Mozilla (that you can see in Firefox 1.5), the one which looks like this:
If you use Feedburner, they've changed their Optimise tab, Chicklet Chooser to provide the code for the new icon instead - or you can just edit your existing template to point to the new icon at http://www.feedburner.com/fb/images/pub/feed-icon16x16.png (for the 16x16 smaller icon, like the one above) or http://www.feedburner.com/fb/images/pub/feed-icon32x32.png for the larger 32x32 icon:
Or you can use an online feed chicklet maker like Automatic RSS Feed Button Maker which generates the code for you which you can just paste into your template sidebar (just make sure you've unticked the boxes for everything but the top button, which is the new standard icon) - you don't even have to download or upload anything.
This is excellent news - the new icon will be far less confusing and daunting to those new to feeds than the common XML or RSS orange icons (like
), and hopefully more and more people will become familiar about what it means, which may also help the uptake of feeds generally. It would be great if lots of bloggers adopted the new icon on their blogs to help this standardisation effort along (and hey, show how up with the changin' times we are!). And if you'd like to be even more user choice-orientated, which I think can only help increase readership, then why not offer your readers the option of full, partial or headline-only feeds too, plus an email option? (obviously changing the URL of the source chicklet http://www.feedburner.com/fb/images/pub/feedchklt.gif to the new icon's URL).Only thing is, I'm not entirely sure myself yet whether (as it says on the Feedicon site) it's a good idea to change it from the standard and more recognisable orange Firefox icon in order to match my blog's colour scheme, i.e. adopt one which looks like this:
I'd be interested to know what others think about that general point, i.e. should everyone go orange for visibility or consistency/standardisation and to avoid user confusion, or do you think it's OK to customise the colour? (and I'd like to take this chance to find out what you personally think about the full vs. partial feeds and email vs. feeds questions too) - so if you have half a minute to answer a short survey (only 6 one-click questions, opens in new window), I'd love to hear your views. (And if I get more than a mere handful of responses, I'll of course let you all know the results.)
I wonder if they'll also change the name of the icon from "chicklet" to something else now - feedlet??
Technorati Tags: feed, feeds, RSS, chicklets, feed chicklets, feed icons, usability, standardisation, browsers, blog, blogs, blogging, blogging tools, Improbulus, A Consuming Experience, Consuming Experience
5 comments:
I think it's best to leave it orange. It's not as if it's large enough that a clash of colors is likely to hurt very much the visual appeal of a given blog.
More importantly, the more it blends in with the color scheme of the blog, the less conspicuous it is. I think you'd want it to be conspicuous; it's a good thing to be able to find very easily.
I've added the orange icon to my blog and welcome standardisation, in the hope that this will make the subscription process more transparent for consumers.
I have to say I agree that orange is best, myself, but I wanted to hear what others' views were. I've gone orange now, as you can see...
Anne, thanks for sharing your views. I'm going with the orange myself as you can see - exactly because of the visibility and raising awareness point. Once many more people are familiar with feeds then I may change the colour to match my blog.
Thank you, it was so useful. I've changed my blog's feed icon and... it's cool!
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