Introduction to RSS
This page is available as a powerpoint file: Introduction to RSS
What is RSS?
What do you associate with "RSS"?
- News / Information
- Updating
- Work
- Acronyms
- Technology
- Complicated
The essence is
- A regularly updated file of news items
- In a structured format
- Stored on a website
- RSS readers (software) regularly poll the file to get new versions
- RSS readers display new items as updates
With RSS, you can “subscribe” to many RSS feeds from different websites, and get “fed” all the new headlines from all of these sites in one integrated list, and see what’s going on quickly. The place where your integrated list is created is called an RSS Reader (also sometimes called an aggregator), and it gathers all the headlines from all the sites you have subscribed to.
RSS structure
RSS files are highly structured, using tags in a similar way to HTML documents. For each feed there is a set of tags with information about the feed (channel) as a whole, then a repeating set of tags for each item.
Look at an example of a feed from NIMR showing the structure.
RSS standards
As with HTML, adherence to the standard is important. If you don't follow the standard there is a danger that your feeds will not work for everyone who wants to see them.
Also like HTML, there are multiple conflicting standards. Some people use RSS 2.0; Some use Atom; some make feeds available in both formats. One report says that RSS 2.0 is winning as Microsoft support it, but both formats are still widely in use.
Further information sources:
Presentation
Again, as with HTML you don't often actually want to look at the raw code, but you have a piece of software to make it look nice. Some feeds are cunningly made so that they automatically appear nicely styled.
Look at an example of a feed from the BBC that displays nicely.
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