IE7 News
Sarah Perez on October 9th, 2005
The IE7 team is debating what icon to use on websites that has an RSS feed available. Apparently, they don’t want to use a simple orange icon with text (like "RSS", "XML", or "FEED") because that would be too cryptic to the average user. Right. And the little icon with the star is going to be so meaningful to the average user. Their decision is going to be partially based on user feedback, so I suggest you comment now.
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I kinda understand where they’re coming from on this. There are a lot of different buttons that all mean “RSS feed” - in addition to all the orange rectangles, there are the Feedburner pixel buttons [BTW, feedburner users? Feedburner is the bane of my existence], regular pixel buttons, text links, and occasionally, nothing at all. But there are also a lot of different RSS feed standards (something which I have spent entirely too much time in my life dealing with as of late). And while the idea of MS coming to the rescue with one button to rule them all (and in the darkness bind them) is somewhat alluring, I don’t think their cute little icon is gonna do it, unfortunately.
Graphical is preferable to text; remember, not everyone is going to recognize “RSS”, particularly in places where Roman alphabet isn’t the standard (Russia, China, etc.). I’d go for waves.png.
Looks like they are trying to make a close copy of the one in Firefox 1.5 or the current firefox with the feed your readers extention installed.
Very fitting for MS.