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I dont want to get into the political differences, just the technical ones. RSS is Really Simple Syndication and it sticks to that concept in every way which way. Because RSS is seen as simplistic many people overlook its power, since it doesn't over define how you are to use it, on the other side of the spectrum is Atom which defines everything and is very strict.
Atom has a lot of them but it looses flexibility that RSS has. Sort of like written languages such as French and English. Its fairly easy to learn french(Atom) because of its rule structure in the language where English(RSS) is a more creative language because of its loose rules to its language but harder to teach someone for the same reason.
Source(s):
I've written applications that consume and produce both Atom and RSS, and assisted with the Atom spec in regards to how it handles enclosures.
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Simply put ATOM is very standards complaint (think PASCAL), while RSS is very loose and less cumbersome to implement (JAVA). While this is good (ATOM) for standardization, it could become a pain in the neck, if "good enough" is what you are trying to get.
The best recommendation and best answer is to read. The author is very clear, and it would just be plagiarism if I try to explain it.
http://blog.webreakstuff.com/2005/07/rss-vs-atom-you-know-for-dummies/
Source(s):
http://blog.webreakstuff.com/2005/07/rss-vs-atom-you-know-for-dummies/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom_(standard)
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RSS is an older format and has more support, but it has some technical problems.[1]
Atom is a newer format, which learned from many of the "mistakes" of RSS.
You can think of Atom as being the solution to RSS's technical problems. Or that Atom is a newer and improved version of RSS.
As a consumer -- as a subscriber to blogs or whatever -- whenever Atom is available, I'd suggest choosing Atom over RSS.
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[1] One of RSS's technical problems is that the RSS "title" and "description" element are only suppose to contain plain text. However, many people shove HTML into those elements (by either setting up a CDATA section or HTML encoding everything using HTML entities or even just putting HTML tags and everything straight in there). This presents a problem in that... #1 it is technically wrong... #2 "sniffing" algorithms that try to figure out if there is plain text in there or HTML will mess up sometimes. For example, consider the title: "3<5 and 7>2"; many systems will just show this as: "32" (since the "<5 and 7>" is seen as a tag). Note there's also a problem #2a in that you can't "talk" about HTML, since it will confuse "sniffing" algorithms. Atom solves this problem gracefully!
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For coders there's all sorts of differences, as helpfully explained above, but in the context of "subscribing to a feed", as he asks in his tweet, there's no real difference, just enjoy the freedom of choosing your own place to read the content!
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As for the question of what the user who subscribes to a feed will see? I believe Atom does provide more info up front, and is a bit more "user friendly". If you've ever clicked on one of those orange icons and just seen a stream of XML in your browser, that's RSS. But if you see a well-formatted page come up telling you that you've hit a news feed, and giving you instructions on how to subscribe to it? I believe that is Atom.
Source(s):
http://backend.userland.com/davesRss2PoliticalFaq
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Answered Question
M$1
January 04, 2009 09:04 PM
What's the difference between "Atom" and "RSS" when I subscribe to a feed?
from Twitter users @ahmednaguib
http://twitter.com/ahmednaguib/statuses/1095729060
http://twitter.com/ahmednaguib/statuses/1095729060
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| January 05, 2009 02:16 AM |
Atom has a lot of them but it looses flexibility that RSS has. Sort of like written languages such as French and English. Its fairly easy to learn french(Atom) because of its rule structure in the language where English(RSS) is a more creative language because of its loose rules to its language but harder to teach someone for the same reason.
Source(s):
I've written applications that consume and produce both Atom and RSS, and assisted with the Atom spec in regards to how it handles enclosures.
| Asker's Rating: |
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Other Answers (5)
January 04, 2009 09:09 PM
This is a hard question to answer because it depends on who (human or automated) is reading the the feed. Simply put ATOM is very standards complaint (think PASCAL), while RSS is very loose and less cumbersome to implement (JAVA). While this is good (ATOM) for standardization, it could become a pain in the neck, if "good enough" is what you are trying to get.
The best recommendation and best answer is to read. The author is very clear, and it would just be plagiarism if I try to explain it.
http://blog.webreakstuff.com/2005/07/rss-vs-atom-you-know-for-dummies/
Source(s):
http://blog.webreakstuff.com/2005/07/rss-vs-atom-you-know-for-dummies/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom_(standard)
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January 04, 2009 09:18 PM
Essentially, Atom and RSS are just two different formats for accomplishing the same thing. RSS is an older format and has more support, but it has some technical problems.[1]
Atom is a newer format, which learned from many of the "mistakes" of RSS.
You can think of Atom as being the solution to RSS's technical problems. Or that Atom is a newer and improved version of RSS.
As a consumer -- as a subscriber to blogs or whatever -- whenever Atom is available, I'd suggest choosing Atom over RSS.
-------------------------
[1] One of RSS's technical problems is that the RSS "title" and "description" element are only suppose to contain plain text. However, many people shove HTML into those elements (by either setting up a CDATA section or HTML encoding everything using HTML entities or even just putting HTML tags and everything straight in there). This presents a problem in that... #1 it is technically wrong... #2 "sniffing" algorithms that try to figure out if there is plain text in there or HTML will mess up sometimes. For example, consider the title: "3<5 and 7>2"; many systems will just show this as: "32" (since the "<5 and 7>" is seen as a tag). Note there's also a problem #2a in that you can't "talk" about HTML, since it will confuse "sniffing" algorithms. Atom solves this problem gracefully!
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January 04, 2009 09:29 PM
From a user perspective, there's no real difference. For coders there's all sorts of differences, as helpfully explained above, but in the context of "subscribing to a feed", as he asks in his tweet, there's no real difference, just enjoy the freedom of choosing your own place to read the content!
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January 04, 2009 10:23 PM
I believe the history of RSS vs Atom is a bit more political than some of the answers are suggesting. Dave Winer, one of the "keepers" of RSS, is ... what's the word....set in his ways? Some folks do not always see eye to eye with him. I believe that Atom came out of some of those issues. As for the question of what the user who subscribes to a feed will see? I believe Atom does provide more info up front, and is a bit more "user friendly". If you've ever clicked on one of those orange icons and just seen a stream of XML in your browser, that's RSS. But if you see a well-formatted page come up telling you that you've hit a news feed, and giving you instructions on how to subscribe to it? I believe that is Atom.
Source(s):
http://backend.userland.com/davesRss2PoliticalFaq
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January 05, 2009 11:38 AM
Regarding... "But if you see a well-formatted page come up telling you that you've hit a news feed, and giving you instructions on how to subscribe to it? I believe that is Atom."...
No, that's probably not Atom (if you're talking about FeedBurner). It used to be the case that some people, like FeedBurner, would use XSL style sheets to make both RSS and Atom web feeds look nice. But they got rid of that (because newer web browsers started handing RSS and Atom natively).
Now, FeedBurner is doing a trick where it checks if there is a HTTP Referer URL. If there is then it sends you a nice HTML page. If there isn't, then it gives you the actual RSS or Atom page. (This might be dependent on the User-Agent too... I haven't tested that.)
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No, that's probably not Atom (if you're talking about FeedBurner). It used to be the case that some people, like FeedBurner, would use XSL style sheets to make both RSS and Atom web feeds look nice. But they got rid of that (because newer web browsers started handing RSS and Atom natively).
Now, FeedBurner is doing a trick where it checks if there is a HTTP Referer URL. If there is then it sends you a nice HTML page. If there isn't, then it gives you the actual RSS or Atom page. (This might be dependent on the User-Agent too... I haven't tested that.)
January 05, 2009 11:42 AM
Also, regarding... "Dave Winer, one of the "keepers" of RSS"....
Dave Winer is more accurately called the "creator" of RSS, rather than one of the "keepers".
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Dave Winer is more accurately called the "creator" of RSS, rather than one of the "keepers".
January 05, 2009 11:22 AM
- Fact Refuted
That's not really true. To say it simply, RSS has some bugs, but Atom doesn't have those bugs.
For example, go write a post with a title of "3<9 and 8>2" in RSS and see what you get. Some software will show you "3<9 and 8>2"; but some will show you "32" (because it thinks "<9 and 8>" is an HTML tag).
Also, try stuff like these...
- "<title>2 & middot; 4</title>"
- "<title><b>2</b> & middot; 4</title>"
- "<title>& lt;b& gt;2& lt;/b& gt; & amp;middot; 4</title>"
(Note I had to put a space between the ampersand that the entity name, because the Mahalo software is changing things.)
Technically, all software is suppose to treat each of those as plain text. And technically all software is suppose to treat many of these as invalid RSS since RSS does NOT have a & middot; entity. And some do. But some don't. And even the ones that [wrongly] allow HTML in there won't render all of those the same way.
One of the design goals of Atom was to solve this bug in RSS.
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For example, go write a post with a title of "3<9 and 8>2" in RSS and see what you get. Some software will show you "3<9 and 8>2"; but some will show you "32" (because it thinks "<9 and 8>" is an HTML tag).
Also, try stuff like these...
- "<title>2 & middot; 4</title>"
- "<title><b>2</b> & middot; 4</title>"
- "<title>& lt;b& gt;2& lt;/b& gt; & amp;middot; 4</title>"
(Note I had to put a space between the ampersand that the entity name, because the Mahalo software is changing things.)
Technically, all software is suppose to treat each of those as plain text. And technically all software is suppose to treat many of these as invalid RSS since RSS does NOT have a & middot; entity. And some do. But some don't. And even the ones that [wrongly] allow HTML in there won't render all of those the same way.
One of the design goals of Atom was to solve this bug in RSS.
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The difference is what your browser makes of them. For example, if you clicked on an atom feed in IE6, you'd just see a stream of XML, but if you click on it in IE7, you see the nicely formatted page. Same with RSS.
It's not RSS vs. Atom, what you're saying, but browser vs. browser.