What's the difference between RSS and Atom newsfeeds?
I use Firefox and click on that little blue RSS icon in the address bar to add feeds to my RSS reader (NetNewsWire). Sometimes when I want to add a feed there are choices between RSS, Atom, and even multple versions (i.e. RSS 2.0).
What’s the difference to the reader? They seem to work the same and all the guides to the differences seem aimed at feed providers, not consumers.
Why would a feed reader care whether something is RSS or Atom, or some version variation therein??
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Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom_(standard)#Atom_compared_to_RSS_2.0) seems have a nice list of comparisons.
I’m a total layman, but here’s my take-home message. An atom feed can specify parts of a post that are plain text and parts that are HTML-rich, whereas RSS can only specify one or the other in a feed. You can also specify which parts of the feed are in which language, presumably leading to a multilingual feed that can be filtered, depending on your audience.
You can read about the variants of RSS there. It sounds like RSS originally was the only format to support file enclosure, which is where podcasting came from. Atom does this too, now, though. The differences seem really minimal, and for the average user, meaningless to the overall experience.
Atom is less popular than RSS 2.0, though. So maybe you could make your decision based on whether you’re a joiner or a rebel.
Like it says in the pages tonedef linked to RSS 2.0 is the most common format. After that it seems to be Atom and then the rest of the RSS formats. (looking at stats at syndic8) There are different branches of RSS formats and they where created by different companies/organizations which is why there are so many of them.
The whole RSS jungle deal have created a bit of pain since the formats are very similar yet still incompatible – not fun when making a reader or service for feeds. They also have some shortcomings or unclear definitions which is why Atom was created and became a standard.
Now whether Atom really is better than e.g. RSS 2.0 is debatable but I suggest that you be the rebel, as tonedef put it. ^^
Hey I just got those rubber wristbands so clearly, I am rebel. Atom just sounds cooler so I’ll go with that but I think that it’s a pretty dumb situation with these multiple formats basically doing the same thing.
Only the tags in HTML differ
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