2. Introduction to How RSS Works
RSS. Short for Really Simple Syndication
(at least now -- more on that later), RSS
is a way to subscribe to a source of
information, such as a Web site, and get
brief updates delivered to you.
These sources are called feeds. When you
subscribe, you'll get a feed -- often a
series of headlines and brief summaries --
of all the articles published on that
particular Web page.
3. RSS Reader
Reading RSS feeds can be a great time-
saver. In the time it takes you to scan
whole Web pages for information, you can
review headlines from dozens of sites all
collected in one place. On the other hand,
the ease with which you u that you can
subscribe to even more sites. You may end
up spending just as much time reading feeds
as you used to on regular Web sites.
4. Aggregators take many forms. When you use a
current-generation Web browser to visit blogs or
news sites, you'll probably see the square
orange logo that indicates the presence of an
RSS feed. Depending on what kind of site you're
visiting, you may even see a link with a whole
list of feeds. Once you click on a link to the
feed, you'll get the option to subscribe.
Different browsers
handle feeds
differently, but
you'll probably be
given a choice of
options for handling
the subscription.
5. Most personal start pages offer only a limited
number of viewable items per feed, though you
may have the option to see more. More than
likely, these personalized pages will also
group your feeds together by site. If you would
prefer your feeds mixed together, for example
with the newest items from all feeds on top,
you will want to consider sites that serve as
feed aggregators, such as Bloglines, Google
Reader or Rojo. These sites will also give you
the option to group feeds together. If you want
your national news in one folder and your
gardening blogs in a separate folder, you can
do that.
6. Creating RSS Feeds
RSS isn't really that different from a
normal Web site. In fact, they're the same
in one respect: Both are simple text files
on Web servers. RSS uses the World Wide
Web Consortium's Resource Description
Framework (RDF) as a guide to tell a feed
aggregator how to read the file. RDF is
based on extensible markup language (XML),
a cousin of hypertext markup language
(HTML), which is the language used for
everyday Web sites.
