RSS Profile Support Added
The RSS Best Practices Profile contains a set of recommendations for how to create RSS 2.0 documents that work best in the wide and diverse audience of client software that supports this format. The Feed Validator now checks for conformance to this profile, and echos the best practice advice contained in the document on how to improve interoperability when any of the following is detected:
- Plain text element containing HTML
- "&" or "<" not encoded using hexadecimal character references
- Item containing more than one enclosure
- Relative URL reference
- Email address without real name
- Misplaced Item
- Image title different than channel title
- TextInput element
- Content:encoded without prior description
- Channel without a atom:link with a rel="self"
- Slash:comments without lastBuildDate
Please direct any questions or comments about the profile itself to the rss-public mailing list.
Atom 0.3 Support Deprecated
Two months after the IETF Atom syndication format specification was declared ready for implementation (more), deprecation warnings have been put in place for all prior versions of Atom, including 0.3. While feeds that previously worked with a given combination of tools yesterday will presumably continue to work with the same combination of tools tomorrow, producers of feeds are being encouraged to step up to the IETF standard.
As always, feel free to join us on the feedvalidator-users discussion list.
Support for Atom 1.0 now in beta
Ever since the the IETF Atom syndication format specification has been declared ready for implementation (more), the demand for Atom 1.0 support by the Feed Validator has been high.
As progress on implementing the Atom 1.0 test cases has reached the point where the feed validator is rarely outright misleading any more, it is time for a wider exposure. At this point, the Feed Validator will accept bug reports on Atom 1.0 support
Particularly be on the look out for the following:
- Errors being reported as warnings, and vice versa
- Additional places where warnings would be helpful
- Unclear or confusing advice
As always, feel free to join us on the feedvalidator-users discussion list.
Version 1.3 supports Atom 0.3
Version 1.3 supports Atom 0.3 working draft. It no longer supports Atom 0.1, 0.2, or the unofficial 0.2.1. Old Atom feeds will fail with an "ObsoleteVersion" or "ObsoleteNamespace" error.
This release also features better validation for urn: and tag: URIs, which are commonly used in <id> elements in Atom feeds.
There was one behavioral change to the RSS validation in this release. Previous versions of the Feed Validator would attempt to flag relative URLs within <description>, <content:encoded>, and <xhtml:body>. This rule was wildly unpopular and was not supported by spec text. It was felt at the time that the issue was important for interoperability, and that the spec would soon be updated to address it, but neither of these assumptions turned out to be true. The check has been removed; relative URLs in those elements will no longer be flagged.
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