Once again serendipity on stumbling intoquickSub – a little piece of CSS and JavaScript code to perhaps add some more usability to the RSS links?
I agree mostly with others contentions on the problems with posting an 
or 
icon on a web page where the human followed link is a mess of inhuman XML. It rightfully confuses the un-initiated.
QuickSub provides a rollover function that provides a comprehensive list of news aggregators that the user can select and then have the RSS added where they wanted. It provides a steady link to an explanation page. Try it on the the link at the top of the CDB main dog and let me know if it works or not.
This is just an experiment the cost of inclusion looks like 1.5 k for the CSS and about 8 k for the JavaScript.
I made a few adjustments from the distributed versions.
The quickSub docs suggest linking it via:
<a href="test" onmouseout="return timeqs();" onmouseover="return quicksub(this, 'http://www.jasonbrome.com/blog/index.rdf');">My feed</a>
which provides no functionality if someone lacks JavaScript or wishes to actually link to the XML (I like to look myself sometimes). A small change provides
<a href="http://www.jasonbrome.com/blog/index.rdf" onmouseout="return timeqs();" onmouseover="return quicksub(this, 'http://www.jasonbrome.com/blog/index.rdf');">My feed</a>
Also, CSS always rears its subtly ugly head, well more so, the wackiness of browsers. In Internet Explorer Mac (5.2.2) the pop up is scaled wide across the screen. By adding a width declaration for the #quicsub class in quicksub.css, this seems to be cleared (also amazingly, it works well in IE6).
#quickSub {
position: absolute;
font: normal 7pt verdana;
border: 1px solid #000066;
visibility: hidden;
z-index: 1000;
width: 180px;
}
quickSub is free, open source, and you can customize appearance with the CSS.
This may not be “the” answer, but looks like a good effort. You could help out by testing this with some different readers- (it passed for me with BlogLines and NetNewsWire).
Neat.
