In a recent post on the RSS Bandit forums entitled Microsoft Feeds API, one of our users asked when we plan to take addvantage of the Windows RSS Platform. Specifically the question asked was

I downloaded IE7 beta 2 preview and one of the new features is feed support. There really is no comparison between RSS Bandit and the minimilist support IE7 provideds however it is my understanding that there is more to the feed support then the basic UI IE provides. Apparently the Feed API is highly integrated into Vista and has been backported to XP as part of IE7. I would like to suggest (and I have no idea if this is even possible) that RSS Bandit embrace this new API. It's in it's early stages and I'd like to see it mature with the help of RSS Bandit into a usable common feed store for any number of apps (RSS Bandit, IE, plus anything else that decides to use it like the sample screensaver app in the API documentation.) Perhaps that's asking too much but I figured I should at least put the idea out there. It would be really great if, while surfing the net in IE I could subscribe to rss feeds using the IE mechanism, maybe take a quick look through them in IE, then later go back in RSS Bandit and be able to use the much more powerful features (such as stored searches, and folder aggregation) without having to have two copies of my actual feed lists to maintain.

Here's a link to the only info I could find on it so far:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/FeedsAPI/rss/rss_entry.asp

To the various people who have asked this question [including my friends on the IE team], the answer is YES we will support the Windows RSS Platform. As Walter, wrote in his post on Windows RSS Platform there are 3 main components of the platform; the Common Feed List, Feed Synchronization Engine, and Feed Store. Ideally I'd like to use all 3 in RSS Bandit but suspect that it'll be difficult to switch to using the Feed Synchronization Engine or the Feed Store provided by the Windows RSS platform. For example, our feed synchronization engine supports subscribing to USENET newsgroups which I doubt the Feed Syncrhonization Engine in the Windows RSS platform supports. On the other hand, it should be straightforward to satisfy the scenario requested in the quoted post where items subscribed in IE 7 are reflected in RSS Bandit and vice versa.

I need to work out the user interface with Torsten but it should be easy for us to support the Common Feed List. My current thinking is that we'll have a special folder for "My Internet Explorer Subscriptions" as opposed to mirroring the entire feed list in RSS Bandit within IE 7 and vice versa. Thoughts?


 

Thursday, 02 February 2006 20:18:42 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
I was actually thinking about this earlier today after reading the IE Team blog.

As opposed to your idea of having a special "IE Subscriptions" folder, why not have RSS Bandit detect that IE has been installed (one time only) and offer to import all of RSS Bandits feeds into the Common Feed List, and just use that to maintain the list of feeds for RSS Bandit from that point on? I know it might be a little work, but if you use an adaptive model to retrieve a feed list it should be very flexible.
Aaron Prenot
Thursday, 02 February 2006 21:23:49 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
The management interfaces on the rss platform are really nice, I like the fine grained control. If you go the route of using the rss platform, bandit extension developers can make use of these apis. otherwise, you'll ultimately find yourself having to design a copy of most of this for your store. maybe making the leap to the rss platform now will save time down the road? You could still support the news subscriptions locally and leave everything rss'esk to the rss platform.
Thursday, 02 February 2006 23:25:47 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
With regards to USENET vs. RSS feeds, could you have different underlying synchronization used and configured via the feed list context menu. I was thinking about this method for interaction with the NewsGator API also, as you could have feeds that are unique to this RSS Bandit install or shared across some public API (NewsGator/IE7) and other types like USENET, or shared via current RSS Bandit sync methods.

With some form of feed state manager interface allowing different sync types (NewsGator deltas vs. RSS Bandit native dump) to manage the underlying sources.
Friday, 03 February 2006 08:15:19 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
My Personal opinion: Don't put the IE feeds in a different folder (or don't force them to be kept there). Just as you have rss feeds or nntp feeds, have a third kind of feed, an IE engine feed. The reason is a feed is a feed is a feed. By forcing the IE stuff to be in a seperate folder you are imposing a technical division on your users for no good UI reason.
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