Copyright © 2004 Steve ShawNo doubt you have seen those small orange 'XML' or 'RSS' buttons beginning to spread across some of your favourite web sites.
Perhaps you have clicked on one out of curiosity, only to be faced with a barrage of angle brackets and undecipherable code, seemingly designed to scare
heck out of anyone less than familiar with
intricacies of this new fangled technology creeping across
web.
But once you click on that button - what do you do then? This article will show you exactly what to do. RSS? It's actually Really Simple, Stupid.
The first thing to do of course is click that button. It may be an orange button with 'XML' or 'RSS' written across it; or you could see
word 'Atom'; or, less commonly, it could be blue with maybe
initials 'RDF'; or it could be a simple link with something like 'Grab My Feed'. Gets confusing, doesn't it? But what
acronyms like XML and RSS actually stand for is less than important - what to do after clicking
button is
important bit.
After clicking
button, you will see all that code - if you have ever viewed
source code to a web page, it looks a little similar.
RSS is just another language of
web, but you can actually completely ignore
code itself, just like you can ignore
source code behind web pages that you visit - you are only interested in
end product that
code is designed to produce for you,
end user.
In
case of RSS, that end product is up to date news on
topics you are interested in.
For example, if you want to keep up to date with
latest information on financial markets, or growing marigolds, or your Aunt Mildred's blog as she travels across
Antarctic, and you see a feed on that particular topic, you can 'subscribe' to it and receive messages via
feed, each time
publisher of
feed updates it.
So how do you 'subscribe' to an RSS feed? The important bit is what is in
browser address (or location) bar after clicking
feed button, i.e.
bit at
top of your browser window that usually starts with 'http://...' and tells you
web address of
page you are visiting.
After clicking
RSS (or XML, etc.) button, you need to copy that address - it's that address that you need to 'plug' into what is generally known as a 'news reader'.