Feed authors can make their feeds readable with XSLT and linking to an appropriate style sheet. Most feed authors unfortunately don't, however. It's not clear

Feed authors can make their feeds readable with XSLT and linking to an appropriate style sheet. Most feed authors unfortunately don't, however. It's not clear why this matters, though, since the the whole value prop of a feed reader is having first-class support/awareness of content syndication; it's not much use to display the structure all pretty-like if the browser ultimately doesn't really know what to do with what's in the feed (aside from painting it on the screen when you visit the URL, that is—you might as well just hit the site in that case). People typically want background updates, integration with notification systems, read status tracking, etc.