More on styling XML (RSS)
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Bill de Hora evolves the idea of styling XML (or if you prefer – RSS) files to make them more than just a load of code nobody understands. He want’s to drop the whole HTML front end and simply use XML/XSL to deliver the content.
If you think about it, one of the reasons why RSS isn’t getting widespread adoption is precisely because regular users take one look at the code and leave immediately.
A one-click solution for subscribing to RSS feeds is badly needed. At the moment a user, who perhaps wants to subscribe, clicks on some orange icon (or whatever) and is confronted with lines of weird code. How are they supposed to know what to do with it, what good it is and what benefits they get from subscribing to a feed versus browsing the old way?
They can’t.
That’s where XML (RSS) code styling comes in. It’s not exactly a one click solution but it’s much friendlier to the end user.
I reported some styling attempts before but the idea hasn’t spread as far as it should – yet.
The funny thing is… it’s not even hard to do. It doesn’t really matter whether you do the styling with CSS or XSL (XML schema) stylesheets. It will take a few minutes if you’re comfortable using either of them and slightly longer if you’re only vaguely familiar with their concepts (that would be me). 
Don’t believe me?
Making the feeds on this site look pretty(er) took us about half an hour but could be repeated in 5min. Granted it’s nothing special (far from it) but you/we could do a lot more. For the moment we went for the easy & simple approach and will probably be making some modifications in the future (especially with the text explaining what to do with RSS feeds and the way items are displayed)
The potential for designers is endless though. If you’re already designing your websites as valid XHTML/CSS then you shouldn’t have many problems doing the same with your feed.
In the end it just may turn out the way Bill describes and HTML becomes completely irrelevant and we will only have feeds that aren’t just a bunch of ugly code. 
