Documentation in RSS Format

Here's my idea for leveraging the power of RSS for usable documentation:

1. Create RSS feeds for documents/manuals and publish it on your support website.


2. The idea is that users that subscribe to a particular document's RSS feed will know when the document is updated. This is possible because users subscribe to RSS feeds using an ?aggregator (desktop or web-based) that polls sites/web pages to which users had subscribed.


3. Your users or customers now can access a particular document or chapter without having to visit your site. This, at the outset, may appear counter-productive but studies show that RSS actually increases website traffic. "BBC news site editor Peter Clifton says the site's RSS feeds delivered 26.7 million click-throughs in July, a 30 percent increase over the previous month." (Source: http://www.cyberjournalist.net/news/002835.php )


4. Customers are notified when a document undergoes a change without the intervention of e-mail.


5. As against mail-based subscriptions and e-mail newsletters, RSS is ?opt-in? and is free of perils—that plague e-mail—?like spam and viruses. Thus, RSS is a safe, secure, usable way for customers to stay in the know about your products and documentation.


6. By de-constructing a document into smaller, logical chunks RSS helps customers to access the information they need without having to skim through the whole manual. Most RSS readers allow users to search for content within subscribed feeds, which again offers redundant access to information for customers.
7. Also, RSS frees content from presentation. Users read RSS content using aggregators or browsers that use their native formatting. I guess most of these readers allow for customization of the format. What's the big deal one may ask; the deal is that users choose how they view your document.


8. RSS frees your 200-page manual from the clutches of PDF. PDF is not a friendly format for online consumption. And, if your document is a 20MB monster, it will eat up bandwidth and freeze your customer's computing resources. While PDF is excellent for print, it sucks online. HTML is an alternative, but it lacks the pinging/notification features of RSS and is a spoilt brat thanks to competing browsers and lack of rigid standards until recently. RSS standsout as a fluid yet robust alternative to boost your document's usability. It is gaining wide acceptance as we speak, and is fast losing its complexity. Gasp! Please bear with the verbosity guys!


9. Firefox supports RSS auto-discovery and subscription features (the orange icon at bottom-right the right in the address bar).


10. Internet Explorer 7 will have RSS support built-in. See related entry on MSDN: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/08/02/446280.aspx


11. RSS allows customers easy access to specific sections of a document and by boosting the readability of documents (because information is chunked in RSS) it encourages users to use documentation to solve issues rather than call or e-mail your support team. Thus RSS is one of the most significant ways to cut-down support costs and improve customer satisfaction.


12. Last, but most important, generating RSS versions of your documentation will not involve any major extra effort. If you already use XML to create documentation (via structured Framemaker or other tools), you just have to modify your XSLT to generate another output in RSS format.
    

What do you guys think? Have your tried it in your work? If yes, please share your thoughts.

Technorati tags: RSS, documentation, technical writing, communication