That
was, actually, what I was trying to say. You are publishing an XML
feed, not a web page. You are publishing data, not a brochure. You
cannot control how your feed renders in non-web browser feed readers.
These readers may not resemble a web browser in any way. Feed
aggregators are not going to preserve your style sheet. Your feed,
within these aggregated feeds, is not going to look remotely like you
intended. It won't look the same when converted to other feed
dialects. There is no requirement in Atom that the xml-stylesheet be
preserved. I don't think it is reasonable for one to expect that feed
readers (built into web browsers or otherwise) are going to be keen on
abandoning their own user interface guidelines because you'd prefer
your entries to be formatted a particular way.
If you want a web page, write your feed as an HTML page.
I will, however, concede that IE has
changed its behavior, and the behavior change is arguably something to
get irritated about. Some of us build sites not with HTML, but with
XML of various forms, and rely on xml-stylesheet to make our
data-oriented site presentable in web browsers. In the past, users
could click on links between, e.g., FOAF-as-HTML and Atom-as-HTML and
their experience wouldn't be too different from any other web page.
Now when they follow that link, they'll get a "page" that looks nothing
like we intended. This is a bad user experience.
So the real question is: How can site authors
instruct a web browser-feed reader hybrid when it should treat an
application/atom+xml document as a web page (via xml-stylesheet) and
when it should treat it as a consumable feed? Perhaps it is reasonable
for these types of applications to work like this:
1. If the feed is requested in the context of a "web" link, and it has an xml-stylesheet directive, treat it as a web page
2.
If the feed is requested within the context of the feed reading
component of the application (thus no web "context"), or would simply
be rendered as raw XML due to the lack of an xml-stylesheet processing
instruction, treat it as a raw feed and present it subject to the feed
reader UI guidelines.