In fact, the RSS reader pulls all your feeds when you click "Refresh" and highlights the ones with new content. In one button-click and about 30 seconds of refreshing, I can tell that (as an example) there is new content on two of my friends' blogs but not four others, new articles on four online magazines I read but not six others, etc. Just in that example, there are ten websites I no longer have to open!
For the ones with new content, I click the feed name and get a list of all the articles, with unread ones highlighted. I can read any of the unread content I wish by clicking on the article title, and the article pulls up in the main browser pane on the right. Once done, I click "mark all as read" and move on to the next feed. If you select your feeds well — specifically, blogs that focus on topics you are interested in, where the blog author frequently links to news articles about the topic, as it is his or her passionate area of interest — you can have a handful of blog publishers doing a lot of your research for you.
As an example, I keep up with several of my favorite musical artists this way. I subscribe to active blogs about them, which link to as many band-related news articles as they can find. This is, literally, the best thing since sliced bread. And heaven knows I love sliced bread, so that's saying a lot.
So now you know what RSS is, and how to use it. Be off, get yourself an RSS reader, and stop visiting any blog when there's nothing new to read.
From Blog and Tan.
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: