Professional Ajax, 2nd Edition

Chapter 7. Syndication with RSS and Atom

The introduction of XML ushered in a new era of information sharing. Previously, data sharing was difficult at best as companies used proprietary transmission protocols and data formats that were unavailable to the public. The idea of transmitting information on a web site using anything other than HTML was a strange, if not unheard of, idea. But this changed in 1998 when Microsoft introduced Internet Explorer 4.0 with a new feature called Active Channels. Built upon the Microsoft-developed Channel Definition Format (CDF), Active Channels allowed web site content to be transmitted (or syndicated) to users' desktops using the bundled Active Desktop. The problem with Active Channels, however, was its poor support for the everyday user. Anyone could make a channel from scratch, but the industry lacked tools to create and manage CDF files easily. The primary users of Active Channels, big media companies, pushed users away with excessive ads that increased the amount of bandwidth the channels used. Additionally, there was little demand for or perceived value in using Active Channels. The whole concept of syndication seemed to have died with Active Channels and the failure of CDF to reach recommendation status from the World Wide Web Consortium. Then came RSS.