Google Toolbar Button API Follow-up

In my last post was my initital reaction to this new API from Google. It’s not surprising that I’m worried about Google’s plans here, as their record on XML cooperation hasn’t been all that stellar. I haven’t fully looked into it yet, but I had noticed Google’s absence from a new standardization effort; Retailers, Engines Want Standard for Product Description (via Gary) lists MSN, Yahoo!, and others.

Anyhow, getting down to the real point, I’ve decided to completely skip over “What Google Should Have Done,” and go right ahead to “What Google Should Now Do.” Save myself the wasted keystrokes.

Step 1: Fix Feed Refresh Interval

Remove the refresh-interval attribute from <feed>. Add it to RSS/Atom in a namespace. This shouldn’t really change anything. This has nothing to do with OpenSearch by the way, it’s just my general opinion on XML – extend an existing format rather than creating a new one.

After I started writing this, DeWitt posted his take on it all: Google Toolbar, Custom Buttons, and OpenSearch. It includes a lot of what I was going to say, so I will continue my comments as a reply to his post.

A final note, for anyone that’s counting… this makes at least four different Google products that are RSS/Atom readers (Google Reader, Google Toolbar, Google Personalized Homepage, Google Desktop). I hope they’re all using the API that the Google Reader team has been developing.

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3 Responses to Google Toolbar Button API Follow-up

  1. Yes, the custom buttons is great and long awaited feature. Now I can access to my favorite web-services directly from toolbar.

    Just another two buttons – http://www.irnis.net/soft/gtbb/ – for Yahoo! and Furl.Net.

  2. mfagan says:

    I would consider your comment to be spam – you obviously didn’t read my post and are only interested in linking to your own website.

    It isn’t completely irrelevant, however, so I won’t delete it at this point.

  3. l miles says:

    Thanks for the post…

    I think google needs to incorporate a variable to ping button to notify the button a new feed is available and vice versus to ping back when the menu has been pulled down.

    Also your comment on refresh hits home b/c I have a web 2.0 project that mashes Google Toolbar Buttons with Wikipedia, Yahoo News and Google Search any topic right in your browser. Unfortunately I am concerned that losing direct control of the refresh may crush my servers…

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