Chances are, you're not entirely sure what the point of RSS is. I saw that little orange icon in Firefox, I've also seen their "live bookmarks" feature, which just looks cumbersome, and just never thought it could be helpful to me. Now, I wouldn't live without it. Here's why.
If you're like me, you have a ton of sites bookmarked or on your favorites list, depending on your browser of choice. That browser should be Firefox, by the way, but that's beside the point. You may have evolved and developed a list of maybe five, ten, fifteen sites you check every day to "stay in touch." RSS is a way you can be MORE in touch — with a higher number of sites — while doing less work.
Here's what you do. Get an RSS reader; I'm using Sage for Firefox right now. There's a search button in the Sage sidebar that searches for feeds of the site you're currently reading (feeds are XML documents that provide updated content from a particular website).
Let's say you're reading a blog and you enjoy the writing, so you want to check in on it regularly to read new posts. Great, it turns out this blog has a feed to enable this, as do many ordinary websites and online publications.
If you click on the feed URL (in the case of a Blogger blog, it's the URL with "atom.xml" after it) you will see a messy document you can't read, but your RSS reader can. That document is updated each time a new post is saved to this blog. Your RSS reader pulls down that document and shows you each post's title — and "marks as unread" any new ones you haven't seen yet.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Bliffle
I've been using RSS for a couple years, but there are still sites one must cruise with the old browser, either because they've not implemented RSS yet, or because their implementation is clumsy.
2 - Pratyush
When there is live bookmarks in firefox why do you need another software for it inside firefox?
3 - scotty
Nice summary of RSS and it's use for the novice blogger. Good job on the review. Here are a few good links about RSS to provide readers some more detail....
Introduction to RSS
Decent list of Feed Readers
Some Freeware Readers over at our sister site
4 - Bliffle
Live bookmarks? I've gotta try that.
5 - JP
Pratyush - For one thing, I don't think Live Bookmarks identify which articles are "new" and which ones you've already read correctly (last I read there were bugs). I might suggest adding a couple of "live bookmarks" and loading the Sage extension with the same feeds, and see which you like better. Sage is easily removed, just uninstall the extension and remove the "Sage Feeds" folder from your bookmarks, nothing to it.
Scotty, thanks for the additional links!
6 - Pratyush
Okay dude. Will try Sage since you specificly think its better.
I tried to use an external RSS reader but it wasn't as convenient. Also tried som in the Firefox and found that uncomfortable as well.
Cheers
7 - JP
Looked thru that link Scotty posted (thanks again!) - I had no idea there were so many readers! Google Reader is another one you can play with, esp. if you have a Google login already. I find it cumbersome and slow by its design, but you can access your feeds from anywhere using that or one of the other online ones (Bloglines is a popular online reader).
8 - Christopher Rose
I use Bloglines to reed my RSS feeds. I have over 175 feeds subscribed and love the service.
I'm effectively creating a highly personalised library of good stuff, all conveniently stashed in one place at no bandwidth cost at all.
The other great feature is the ability to create unique email addresses to subscribe to ezines or newsletters and have then show up as if they were feeds too.
9 - Christopher Rose
On a related note, does anyone have any experience of using Radio Userland? It looks like it could be a lot of fun...
10 - OperaFan
I personally recommend Opera's RSS reading features (99%of you are now asking what opera is). I know none of you use it, and i frankly hope it stays that way so no one bothers writing viruses/hacks for it.
Don't try it and dont recommend it to your friends, just admit that it is cool and continue to ignore it.
Thanks
11 - Eric Olsen
super job JP, many thanks!
12 - James Dykes
Hey this is a really cool introudction. If anyone is interested in writing an RSS feed in PHP check out
my URL!!
13 - boohiss
Don't you tell me what browser I should be using! Opera has a built-in RSS reader, and Google has a web-based reader that works with all browsers.
14 - NewzSpider
NewzSpider is news aggregator that is great for beginners. Give it a try!
15 - H
Firefox ? come off it, Opera is the best web browser, bittorrent client, irc chat client, ftp client, rss reader, + more
But I can't recommend it. You guys stick with your 1337 firefox
16 - Victor Plenty
Great work, JP! You got all three of the Opera users to post comments!
17 - Mark Saleski
woa...i just checked the browser share page for bc. firefox is up to 50%.
the two flavors of ie are down to 37% combined.
18 - Matias Gonzales
Since when did we become too lazy to type in a url and actually visit the page?
19 - Matias Gonzales
Also, Opera has done alot more right than Firefox, take a look at the most popular Firefox extensions. Those are all INTEGRATED into Opera. I just use Firefox because I like the icon. :D
20 - Mark Saleski
i'm sorry, but microsoft has made the word 'integrated' seem a whole lot less sexy than it used to be.
21 - Phillip Winn
Sitemeter says only 47% of our readers are using MSIE, but it isn't clear what period of time that's for. Internal stats put that number closer to 54% over time.
Still, Opera is used by almost 2% of our readers, which is only in fourth place, behind MSIE (54%), Firefox (37%), and Safari (5%).
22 - Opera Lover
and email too.. don't want Outlook.. Thunderbird kept jamming up, worse than Firefox.. must say I do feel uneasy about being spoiled rotten by Opera.. all my eggs in one basket.. almost all internet activity in one re-arrangeable window.. I'd never have got RSS going without having blundered into it. Maybe later, when I understand a thing or two, I could move on.. where to? Maxthon? That has its Swiss Army Knife uses right now - IE engine - and vv fast..
23 - Opera Lover
The default setting in Opera -which I've kept- is for it to pretend to be MSIE. Would your stats see thru that? (pathetically hoping to beef up my " almost 2% " crowd)
24 - John Bokma
Personally I love the Live Bookmarks in Firefox. I wrote a tutorial for users new to live bookmarks and RSS:
I tried Sage, and didn't like it much. To me, just having quick access to the head lines is enough, and hence Live Bookmarks are sufficient.
BTW: don't break the web, remove nofollow attribute from your links. If you worry about comment spam, hand moderate. Don't punish genuine links with a badly thought out idea.
25 - Paul Stamatiou
Great article, but I still feel that this article was much more comprehensive: