RSS: Really Simple Syndication
An RSS feed is simply an XML document. Typically, it is used by a news website such as MacRumors so that RSS clients can download just the headline and an abstract of the news item, and then the user can click on a link to the full story if it sounds interesting.
CSS: Cascading Style Sheets
CSS is a simple way to concatenate style information (i.e. typeface, colors, etc.) and make it easily accessible. For example, on the website for the company that I work for, I have emphasized text set to italic and blue. So the code in the style sheet looks like this:
Code:
font.emphasis {font-style: italic;
color: #00A; }
This way, to indicate in the HTML to mark something as emphasized, I can do this:
Code:
<font class="emphasis">Blah blah blah</font>
Instead of this:
Code:
<font color="#0000A0"><i>Blah blah blah</i></font>
This is a lame example, but you can imagine it comes in handy when I use a particular set of six or seven parameters on a regular basis, such as when I'm making a table with several standard cell sizes, all of which need to have a particular background color.