After writing "News Feeds, the Future of Newsletters", I realized that there was one thing missing - branding.
Styled Feed in NetNewsWire
So I started experimenting and found it is quite possible to style news feeds.
I have only tested this in NewsGator, NetNewsWire and Bloglines. Bloglines does not support styling, but just as with XHTML/CSS and NS4, the unstyled version should look just fine.
It is very simple, instead of just adding the pure content I have added a head and body tag to every single post. Within this head we have a stylesheet. The "description" field is basically made into a full webpage (it even includes a DOCTYPE).
One thing I found is that newsreaders have very different default font sizes. NetNewsWire's default size is about 0.8em while NewsGator's default size is the same as Internet Explorer's. In order to get consistent font sizes you need to set a default font size, in pixels - body {font-size: 11px;}
To be honest this article worries me and it took me several hours of indecisiveness before I finally published it. If we introduce style into news readers, we are introducing all the bad things about styling. Things like text with low contrast, tiny text, the use of images for layout instead of content etc.
It also allows us to take all the usability problems we have on the web - and bring into the news feed world. I have already introduced a few new problems with my two examples - one is the inconsistent way I have placed the links back to the website.
So be very careful about what you do. Styling can enhance and improve content. It can also break it. Just because we can do something does not mean we should and I would hate to see newsreaders become hard to read and user-hostile.
Published: May 15, 2004 
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thalia
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I love so much about your style and what you say. I love the size of your type, the clarity of your words. You are above my level and I often do not understand what you are saying, but the way you write makes me want to understand- not frustrating, but it makes me want to keep reading to find out more, more, more. . . .I wonder if you could lead me in the right direction for learning more about web development. I have all of the wrong characteristics for easy it learning. I am 50, a massage therapist, not much computer, math, or technology education or experience- but I am drawn to it. I completely understand the truth to updating one's website to changing moods in complexity, texture, and style-- keep talking!