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Interesting. I find there are a few other things you do to also design for the masses, as if you only design things to be extremely obvious then we are catering to the lowest common denominator all the time and that slows the majority of all people up (with regards to adoption of technology and consumption of media)
A couple of my suggestions:
1) Know technology. IE 7 is being used more each day and this is really plugging and introducting tabbed browsing and live RSS (the icon) to the mainstream. If you anticipate this and code for RSS consumption in various ways then you will find the live RSS icon pick up over time until it becomes the norm.
2) Develop and design with users in mind. The following article on opening a window in Javascript shows you how to code a popup window, anticipating the popup blocker that is default on many browsers. Smart.
The users will pick up on technologies slowly, it’s our jobs to introduce them in a usable manner.
and another thing… On wordpress sites (such as yours & mine) there is absolutely no indicator on how to subscibe to an RSS feed at all. It is left up to the browser to identify. (I must fix mine one of these days…)
hmmm
I have a class of web design students, none of whom knew what the RSS feed in the address bar was…
Oliver - you’re right, I never even noticed that. I even had someone the other day ask me where my RSS feed was and I just sent them the URL without thinking.
Another thing to add to the to-do list.
Lisa, out of curiosity did they know what RSS was in the first place?
I’m just wondering as I don’t know how mainstream the concept of RSS has gone yet - everyone I know is either intensely into the Online world or complete luddites, I don’t really know too many people in between to gauge it from.