Microsoft’s, or the IE Team’s lastest browser has a new addition to the RSS/ATOM feed collection. WebSlices takes a different aproch to the infomration source: not an xml file. They are allowing users to look at any page and use their mouse to the select a portion of that page and turn it into the source of the feed. Basically, if you had wanted my recent posts, probably on the right of this text, that section of the html would be parsed repeatedly and it would be like any other feed on the internet!
I see some problems with this. Big problems. What if you, heaven forbid, change the design of your site? The information might still be on that page, but not on the same space in html order as it used to be. For instance, if I were to rearrange my plugins on wordpress, the order of the recent posts would be lower while the catagories would be higher. So the infomration is still there, but it’s not in same place. Will it work after you mess with the placement of the information you’ve already turned into a pseudo-feed?