When Microsoft's RSS team posted some proposed icons for the RSS tool to be integrated into IE7, they no doubt expected a response, but I doubt they were prepared for the firestorm set off by the five orange rectangles displayed on the RSS team blog. "My feedback: a big thumb down. Use the white on orange XML icon and stop re-inventing," posted the effervescent Dave Winer. Meanwhile, over 200 comments filled the blog, ranging from serious discussions of the buttons to fanboy enthusiasm for some of Microsoft's other products ("Halo 2 rocks more than any of these icons... but then again... there's very little that rocks as much as Halo 2 to begin with.").  The most cogent response I've seen came from Windows guru Ed Bott, who moved beyond design to focus on functionality: "Today, in most browsers, if you click the orange (or blue) XML/RSS/whatever button you get taken to a Web page that is an ugly, stripped-down version of the page you were just reading ... When IE7 ships, it needs to have a really great way of dealing with RSS feeds. If it's successful in that regard, then people at all technical levels will have a good experience when they click the button, regardless of its color, shape, or text." I think it's great that Microsoft is soliciting this kind of feedback as they develop new products, but somehow I suspect that deep inside Fortress Redmond, some IE developers are probably wishing they could just turn back the clock and develop by fiat like they did back in the day.

[Via Microsoft Watch]