RSS Information
GridPP implements an RSS feed of its news items so members, and others, can keep up to date with the collaboration. This is a guide to RSS if you don't know what RSS is or want to use RSS but are unsure of the best way.What is RSS?
From http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/12/18/dive-into-xml.html :"RSS is a format for syndicating news and the content of news-like sites, including major news sites like Wired, news-oriented community sites like Slashdot, and personal weblogs. But it's not just for news. Pretty much anything that can be broken down into discrete items can be syndicated via RSS: the "recent changes" page of a wiki, a changelog of CVS checkins, even the revision history of a book. Once information about each item is in RSS format, an RSS-aware program can check the feed for changes and react to the changes in an appropriate way."
GridPP's RSS feed is of the four most recent news items on its news page and allows users to see the headlines of these items without visiting the site.
How do I use RSS
There are four main ways to use RSS:- RSS Aggregator
- Email client with built in RSS reader
- Live Bookmarks
- Web browser with RSS reader
RSS Aggregator
You can use a stand alone program known as an 'aggregator' to check RSS feeds and display their output to you. When you launch the program it will go check all the feeds you have listed and come back with the news from that site.Email client with built in RSS reader
Some email clients have a built in aggregator (e.g. Thunderbird) or have plugins which will allow you to access RSS (e.g Outlook Express). They work the same way as the above aggregators but are not a stand alone program.
To use both of the above methods you will need the URL for the RSS feed. If a site has an RSS feed you will see a symbol like this on the page:
it is usually blue or orange and can say RSS or XML (the language RSS is written in). This is a link to the RSS feed but instead of clicking it you "right-click" and "save link location". You then paste the link into the wherever your aggregator asks for the feed URL. If you wish to test this the above image is a link to GridPP's RSS feed(http://www.gridpp.ac.uk/news/?feed=rss2). There are identical ones on the main page and the news page.
Live Bookmarks
This method of reading RSS has been implemented in most modern web browers except IE. When you visit a website if it supports live book marks you should see a symbol on the right hand side of the URL bar which will be blue or orange. Clicking on this symbol will add a bookmark to your links toolbar. When you use this bookmark you get a drop down choice of (in GridPP's case) the last four news pieces. To see what the exact symbol is for your browser just look at the URL bar now because this site has live bookmarks. It has been noted that in some versions of Linux browsers the live bookmark symbol appears in the bottom right hand corner of the browser.Web browser with RSS reader
These are a mix between the live bookmarks and the plugins for email clients. They are plugins for your browser which will search a webpage to find any links to RSS feeds on it and let you add them to your list.
Last modified Thu 23 September 2010 . View page history
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