Over the past few days, the comments box has gotten bigger, the ability to remember your personal information has been added (presuming you have javascript and cookies enabled), comments got the ability to have hypertext links (this change was made retroactive), the archives got a dynamic index, shorter URLs were introduced for common tasks (e.g., Comments in html format, Comments in rss 0.92 format, Comments in rss 2.0 format), amoung other things.

My transition to intertwingly.net is intentionally being done in a careful and considered manner.  The old content doesn't suddently stop getting updated with everybody expected to update their bookmarks, blogrolls, and subscriptions all at once, instead both are kept in synch. Yesterday, I even added a static link from each radio weblog item  to the dynamic intertwingly comments page for that item.

Just so it is clear to all, none of this is a meant as a slight or repudiation of Radio.  In fact, I've recently recruited three new radio users.  I am just a hacker who likes to pull things apart and put them back together.  It appears that I have talked a person of a similar inclination to try blosxom.  Each represents one more RSS feed to follow.  Yummy.

  11:44:07 AM   Comment 

Lots of really, really, really good progress on RSS.  Now, I'd like to make a plea.  Slow down.

RSS 0.94 added a number of elements without consideration as to what possibilities were out there once namespaces were added.  Now it looks like namespaces will be added.

What RSS 2.0 needs now is a focus on simplicity and some serious deprecation.  Strip it to the core.  Then have two modes (just like HTML does)... a transitional mode which allows anybody to add any element they wish with or without namespaces, including the classic 0.91 ones like skipHours and the proposed 0.94 ones.  And a strict mode in which the only additions permitted are ones that reside in namespaces.

Before somebody says that we don't have time for that... how long does it take to remove elements from a document?

  9:38:18 AM   Comment