JaySmall.com/old

It's been months since Microsoft decided to use the same icon to represent Really Simple Syndication that Firefox uses.

In that time, I've been staring at the icons long enough to realize something interesting -- not earth-shattering, but interesting.

The icon Microsoft put forth, which can now be seen on many blogs, isn't quite the same as the one seen in the Firefox browser (and on this site). I picked the Firefox version because the differences I observed make that icon a more precise communicator than the other. RSS as a concept remains tough enough to explain to nontechnical Internet users, so I want any visual representations to have maximum value in that education effort.

Judge the following observations for yourself in the example image with this post, which shows the two variants in icon and enlarged sizes:

• The Firefox version appears to be designed to look best at "favicon" (icons that appear in browser address bars) size. The Microsoft version looks better about twice that size. It has corners that appear rounded more softly at larger sizes, but more sharply at favicon size.
• The "point of origin" of the syndication "waves" in the Firefox version is a square. The Microsoft version uses a round dot.
• The arc lines that represent those waves in the Microsoft version appear thicker at large sizes than those in the Firefox version.
• The arc lines in the Firefox version are complete quarter-circles. Though their ends are trimmed to zero and 90-degree angles, in the Microsoft version the arcs aren't true quarter-circles. I haven't tried, but I think if you completed these arcs you'd get an oval, not a circle.
• Because of that difference, and because the arc start and end points are shifted down and to the left, the upper right of the Microsoft version seems empty compared to the Firefox version.
• In the Firefox version, the arcs, if completed, would make concentric circles with the upper right corner of the point of origin square as a center point. In the Microsoft version, if you complete the arcs into ovals, the center point would be somewhat outside the lower left edge of the point of origin dot. That's a subtle difference, but the visual metaphor of waves emanating from a strong source is clearer in the Firefox version. To my eye, the Microsoft version looks like the dot is being "shielded" by the arcs.

I don't know how Microsoft's version came about. But it pretty clearly was prepared by a designer who paid more attention to color blends and high-resolution presentation than to all the subtleties of the original icon.

Is any of this important? It depends on how important you think RSS is and will be, and how important you think it is to promote a standard icon for it.

I say it's important enough that someone should invest in rendering the Firefox version for higher resolutions. It remains superior to the second-generation design, and those subtleties should be preserved in the "standard" icon that emerges.

Update (7/24/06, 1:56 p.m. EDT): Some folks say Microsoft plans to change the icon before the launch of Internet Explorer 7 in Windows Vista. If that's what they're going to, it does address the "waves vs. shields" remark I made, but hoo boy, the rest of the changes are ug-ly.