Why you should (mostly) ignore the feed icon
Because when I have a very verbose blog on my hands, one overflowing with content and blogrolls and adsense ads and links and content and and and (take Dan Gillmore‘s for example)… my fingers automatically hit ctrl + f, “rss”, enter. Retry, “feed.” You can’t search text with images, everybody, so if you’re gonna use a chicklet or icon or any other type of image, please be kind and rock that text, too, ok? First lesson in usability is never replace what should be text with non-text, which is why it goes without saying that icons should serve as pointers and identifiers, not as sources of information themselves, as they too often are.
Co-founder of


As a Firefox user, I tend to go for the feed icon in the address bar. I get really irked having to search for “RSS”, or look for a feed icon, in the content of a page. It’s nice to have the way you subscribe unified across sites.