Firefox feed icon adopted by Microsoft for IE7

Filed under: Internet, Windows, Microsoft, Mozilla

Firefox feed icon adopted by Microsoft for IE7

by Jordan Running Dec 14th 2005

What's going on here? Is Microsoft just blatantly ripping off Mozilla's stuff now? Well.. yeah. Except they asked nicely. Over at Microsoft's RSS Team blog, a developer named Jane has posted about their search for an icon to represents feeds in IE7 and their decision, with the cooperation (and, it would seem, encouragement) of Mozilla's John Lilly and Chris Beard, to use the familiar white-on-orange icon from Firefox. Could this be the beginnings of an industry-standard icon for all RSS and Atom feeds?

[Via Digg]

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

J.T. Mill said 10:06PM on 12-14-2005

"Could this be the beginnings of an industry-standard icon for all RSS?"

Well, if Microsoft uses it than it pretty much becomes the standard weither we like it or not. Remember when everyone still used ActiveX? Just wait until this icon is found to kill 2% of people who are afraid of change. That'll probably get people to stop using it eventually, excpt for on the FEMA website of course ^_^

mike said 10:14PM on 12-14-2005

wait, they took a company-funded trip to california to talk about an icon?

haha nice. i need to go across town and apply for a job @ microsoft.

Oliver said 3:31AM on 12-15-2005

Wait again. To me it seems everyone's (incl. FF) using Apples Airport Icons.
http://ecomputing.med.harvard.edu/images/airport_app92.gif

See the image. That's OS9. 4 years ago.

Chris said 12:42PM on 12-15-2005

Honestly, if Microsoft's IE developers are working with other browser developers to help develop standards with address bar color coding and icons, then all the power to them.

It only helps reinforce that all the developers are trying to jointly increase the value of the web without battling with users and flinging mud at eachother.

Firefox, probably unintentionally, awoke a sleeping beast with Microsoft, and now that they're awake and pumping development into Internet Explorer... as long as Firefox is around, IE will probably be right there along with the rest of the browsers.

Chris said 1:15PM on 12-15-2005

Featured Time Waster

Civiballs is a beautiful, soothing physics puzzle Time Waster

I have an absolute weakness for physics games, and while Civiballs isn't the strongest physics-based game, what it lacks in the physics department it makes up for a few times over in style and fun.

In Civiballs, you are presented with a few colored balls, and your goal is to get those balls into the same-colored urn on the level. The "civi" part of Civiballs is that there are 3 sets of levels to play, each representing a different civilization. While the civilization doesn't affect gameplay, the artwork for each level is beautifully themed to it's appropriate era.

To play the game, you are given only one tool - a sword with which to cut the chains that are holding the balls. The puzzle part of the game is in figuring out what order, and with what timing to cut each chain. Do it right, and all the right balls end up in the right urns, with no stray balls entering an urn (a no-no). Do it wrong, and you get to start over again.

Civiballs is not terribly deep on gameplay; the entire game can be completed in about 15 minutes. But if you enjoy this type of game, it will be a very enjoyable 15 minutes.

View more Time Wasters