XSLT and RSS

Statement: Every RSS feed in the world should have an XSLT stylesheet.

I was listening to a discussion from Gnomedex that iPodder grabbed for me. This guy from Yahoo was talking about their new RSS tools. One of the things he mentioned is the new button. He made a good point. A lot of people see that little, orange "RSS" button and give it a click. They're then faced with a naked XML document. That can be very confusing for the average user.

While the Yahoo link is a good option, it really is limited to only Yahoo's users. XML documents have the option of linking in other docuemnts for formatting their data. One format that's particularly insteresting is XSLT, which is a formatting markup language for XML. Most modern browsers can parse this data, and will do so automatically.

What this means for the user is this: Instead of seeing some confusing looking XML document, users who navigate to an RSS feed with their browsers can actually see a very usable web page. At the bare minimum, it should be a doc that explains to them what an RSS document is and how to use it. Even better, it could be a formatted version of the content of the XML document. Idealy, it would do both. Using XSLT, an RSS doc can become just like any other page a user might view. They can even bookmark it and just go there instead of downloading some RSS aggregator.

The really cool part is that all this is done without messing with the actual XML doc. Thus, all RSS aggregators can grab the exact same document and do their magic with it.

I really can't think of any reason why someone would not want this on their site. If you can think of any, I would love to hear them.