What is RSS?

21-10-08 | Posted by: melanie

An RSS feed is content that can be delivered from a website, often a blog, into an RSS reader. When new content is published the RSS feed reader is notified and downloads the content to be read within the reader. Instead of having to visit all your favourite websites to find updates you can read them all in one place. You’ll often see the words RSS (really simple syndication) and the orange RSS icon where content is published as a feed.

What is an RSS reader?

An RSS reader is the tool that automatically gathers and displays a list of all new, unread items from all your different feeds. You can subscribe to new feeds and unsubscribe from existing feeds using your reader. Just to confuse matters, RSS readers are also known as feed readers, news readers and aggregators. Here is a screen grab of my screen reader.

How do I get an RSS reader?

Many newer web browsers now have built in news readers. Some examples are Firefox, Internet Explorer (IE7) and Safari. Other readers are web based, the advantage of these types of reader is that you can access them from any browser once you've logged in. Some examples are Newsgator and Bloglines and our preferred reader, Google. There are also a number of desktop readers such as Feed Demon (Windows) and NetNewsWire (Mac).

How do I subscribe to a feed?

Subscribing is usually as easy as clicking ‘subscribe’ or the RSS icon. This will usually launch your reader that will automatically add the latest feed to your list of subscriptions.