Feed Headlines is the RSS gadget integrated in Windows Vista. By default, Feed Headlines is situated on the Vista Sidebar. John Moscarillo, Vista Sidebar Gadget Developer, revealed that development was focused on delivering a comprehensive user experience. In this regard, the gathering and storing feed data processes were simplified in the building process. Vista Feed Headlines is based on the Windows Feeds Plarform.

"Initially, the gadget was prototyped using an http request to handle the xml files from each feed, similar to other AJAX development. Designing and developing the prototype quickly revealed that managing feeds was going to be very consuming to develop due to how much code would need to be written for feed download, storage, and user management not to mention the bugs introduced due to the extra code," explained Moscarillo.

In fact, Vista Feed Headlines is more than just constructed with the operating system's feed platform. According to Moscarillo, Feed Headlines ended up becoming the new face of the Vista feed platform. This because the Vista feed gadget needed to be a feed aggregator covering the complete range of syndicated formats.

"As part of this development process we took a look at the Internet Explorer 7 feed reading experience and realized that our experience with a Sidebar gadget had to interact with Vista's new feed platform. Because we chose to build the gadget on top of the feed platform the job became a lot less complex, and a more usable gadget emerged," added Moscarillo.

The extra usability he is referring to is a result of the synchronization of read/unread data and of the fact that Feed headlines do not require a specific RSS list. In fact, feed management in Vista functions by centralizing feeds into a single location independent of application.