18 October 06

Microsummaries: the new RSS?

They say 2007 will be the year of the feed – will 2008 be the year of the microsummary?

For those not in the know, microsummaries are a brand new feature in the brand new Firefox 2.0 that have not been particularly publicised. They are basically bookmarks that, in a similar way to RSS, self update. For instance, you could have a microsummary for eBay auctions that will tell you how much time is left and the highest bid, which is not only very useful but saves a lot of time checking the information yourself. Another example could be a bookmark that would act as a news ticker and get the latest headline for a site.

Microsummaries are the step between normal static bookmarks and RSS feeds. For the average internet user, RSS feeds are too complicated to understand. Microsummaries will be useful for this type of user if they think of them as self-updating bookmarks – a lot easier for them to comprehend.

The ingenious thing about microsummaries is that the content provider doesn’t need to create the XML behind the microsummary. This is a massive advantage over RSS as anyone with a small knowledge of XSL/XPath can create their own microsummary for any site. Any part of the content from the bookmarked page can be used in the microsummary. I predict that, very soon, we will be seeing some very useful microsummary tools.

Microsummaries, at the moment, are still very very young. It’s a Firefox-only feature at the moment, so it’s a waiting game to see if other browser vendors to pick up on them. It’s taken years for RSS to take off in a large scale way – IE7 and Office 2007 only now will support feeds, but I really do hope Opera or Safari pick up microsummary support in the near-future, and only then will a wider audience of users will get to see the unique benefits of microsummaries.

More information

• Microsummaries 101
• Using microsummaries
• Some nice examples of microsummaries

Update: This blog now has a microsummary if you would like to try. You will need Firefox 2.0. All you need to do is bookmark the site, then use the dropdown in the bookmark name field to select the live title.

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