Just
like the large number of different web browsers that you need to design
for (you have Internet Explorer, Netscape, Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla,
Safari, Mac Firefox, Mac Internet Explorer, etc.), there are also a ton
of RSS readers. On top of that, RSS readers can be desktop based or web
based – similarly to email with desktop email like Outlook or Lotus
Notes and web-based email like Gmail or Hotmail. From a web designer's
or content publisher's perspective, a person in these trades needs to
be aware that the content they are publishing on their site will look
good no matter where a user sees it.  

The good news is
that RSS is getting a lot friendlier. Not only are there many one click
options to add feeds to your reader of choice, but if a reader clicks
on a link to a feed they no longer will be scared off by a block of
code like this:

One way to make sure your RSS content looks good when a reader
clicks on a link it to integrate content with services like Feedburner.

But
when an image covers up the text of an article on a popular RSS reader
making the content pretty much unreadable, the whole point of an RSS
reader, and RSS itself, is ruined. That's no good. Imagine you're a
user who just figured out how to use RSS and you're getting it, but
then you get content coming in from one of your favorite sites and you
can't read it because the images that go with the content cover up the
text.  

We recently caught and fixed an issue just like
this on some of our new Drupal version 4.7 sites. Img_assist, a module
used to insert images into posts, was putting out calls to an external
style sheet which held the commands to align the image, either to the
left or to the right. RSS readers do not download this external style
sheet in their default view, resulting in a messy, sometimes unreadable
display. Although the page may look great on the original website, in
an RSS reader it was a different story.  

To fix this issue
we made the CSS go directly into the HTML with a simple change to the
img_assist module and a minor change to the main style sheet for the
website.  Now RSS readers and web browsers are both seeing the
same thing, and readers can read again.