Rss

[Smileyguy]

I've only just used an RSS browser - Shiira - for the first time today, and having browsed through old posts and seen that this was a major requirement for people considering various browser options, I have to say I'm perplexed.

I'm not really understanding the full benefits of RSS. What exactly is it and what can it do? So far, all I've seen is as follows - I go to the NY Times website, click the little blue RSS button, and I get a list of stories in a simple text-only standardised type of format. But what more can it do? Is it possible to build my own personalized RSS page that updates with only the stories of sites I choose it to?

Explain!

 

[rendezvouscp]

Here's a basic overview:

You can use RSS to keep up to date with blogs, news sources, etc. by clicking the button and updating it. I've made a folder named "RSS" where I keep all of the feeds I bookmark, and then I've categorized them into folders depending on what they are. Safari can tell me when there's a new article to read, and what folder it's in once I open the RSS folder.

You can do this with most blogs with comments too. Many blogs have a comment feed for all of their comments, or just comments for a particular article. When you want that, you should look around on the actual page and click the link there, since the blue button in the address bar will probably be for the whole site. It's pretty easy to keep up with the comments on a site with RSS.

You can also set multiple feeds as your home page. When you have a folder of feeds that you'd like to make your home page, open the folder (in the menu bar, etc.) and click on View All RSS Articles. This "mashes" them all together and from there, you can choose to display them however you want (past seven days, by the new ones, etc.).

Hope that helps out a bit.
-Chasen

 

[dolphin842]

Another way of utilizing RSS is to have a separate app (i.e. not Safari of Shiira) handle your RSS feeds for you. The most popular of these apps is NetNewsWire (there's a free version at the bottom of the page). The app essentially looks like Mail, but it's for RSS feeds. This setup works if you have a lot of RSS feeds, or if you like to look at the feeds for each site separately.

Essentially the purpose of RSS is to save time by checking the feeds of websites all at once to see if there's anything new, rather than going to each site individually.

 

[superbovine]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_(protocol)

RSS is a family of XML dialects for Web syndication used by (among other things) news websites and weblogs. The abbreviation is used to refer to the following standards:
Rich Site Summary (RSS 0.91)
RDF Site Summary (RSS 0.9 and 1.0)
Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0.0)
The technology of RSS allows Internet users to subscribe to websites that have provided RSS feeds; these are typically sites that change or add content regularly. To use this technology, site owners create (if they do not have much knowledge or interest in the basic RSS formats, there are some free online RSS creation and hosting resource, which may provide more options for different RSS content or subscription needs) or obtain specialized software (such as a content management system) which, in the machine-readable XML format, presents new articles in a list, giving a line or two of each article and a link to the full article or post. Unlike subscriptions to many printed newspapers and magazines, most RSS subscriptions are free.
The RSS formats provide web content or summaries of web content together with links to the full versions of the content, and other meta-data. This information is delivered as an XML file called an RSS feed, webfeed, RSS stream, or RSS channel. In addition to facilitating syndication, RSS allows a website's frequent readers to track updates on the site using an aggregator.