RSS for Dummies: A Primer

I’ve wanted to write this for a while, but have held off because I worried that such a boring and generally nerdish article wouldn’t be of much interest to the readers of this site. However, that was during the halycon days of once-a-week updates when I worried about things like quality. Today I find myself entering the last week of this crazy month-long marathon. ‘Quality’ is little more than a really good SCRABBLE word (Would score upwards of 100 points every time!) as now I spend my days racking my brain for ANY topic that will give me enough words to post before midnight.

So today, you get this.

What is RSS?

RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication” and is a term that you will hear more and more over the coming years. Already a touted feature in the Mozilla Firefox and Apple Safari internet browsers, RSS is, very basically, a bringing together of both world wide web and e-mail functionality, resulting in a system wherein web content — normally something you have to go out and find yourself — is delivered to the user in a simple (really) but tremendously useful manner.

Like How?

In a nutshell, it allows you to have a list of sites that are updated frequently, like so:

When a site is updated, you get alerted to it, like so:

In the example above, the sites are livejournals (whose RSS feeds are a bit different than other RSS sites — more on that later) but this kind of functionality is available on nearly every site that’s subject to frequent updates. Everything from news sites like CNN and, of course, CBC, to entertainment sites like SomethingAwful and TelevisionWithoutPity, to webcomics like… the ones I would link to if I read any good web comics currently. In all cases, you are instantly alerted to the presence of new content *AND*, depending on which program you are using to ‘catch’ the feed, the article itself may be automatically downloaded to your computer, ready to be viewed in your RSS reader program.

The latter is the case with the program depicted above, NetNewsWire Lite. When Caroline Gaston — who is the example here because hers was the last site to update and not because I like her any better than the rest of the people on that list (though, secretly, I might) — updated, I was able to view her latest entry instantly, without having to view any of that putrid pink colour she is so fond of:

Making it work for you

There are literally dozens of RSS readers available. An RSS reader will typically be a program like NetNewsWire that allows you to maintain a list of RSS feeds, will notify you when any of them are updated, and will allow you to view the latest articles coming through those feeds within the program itself. Notable RSS readers include:

For Windows:

• FeedReader
• SharpReader
• Mozilla Thunderbird (also an e-mail client)

For Mac:

• NetNewsWire / NetNewsWire Lite
• NewsFire
• Mozilla Thunderbird (also an e-mail client)

Web-Based
Web-Based clients maintain much of the functionality of RSS reader programs you have to download, except in many cases they are easier to set up and also allow you to access them on any computer, like you would your web-based e-mail account (hotmail, gmail, etc).

• NewsNinja
• BlogLines

In addition, and as stated earlier, there is limited RSS functionality built into Mozilla Firefox and the Safari web browser for OS X. This functionality will also be present in the upcoming Internet Explorer 7, the release of which will likely make my job as a web developer very very difficult. But not because of the RSS stuff. The RSS stuff will be great, I’m sure.

How can I tell if a site has an RSS feed?

The easiest way is to just look for a link that says “RSS”. Most sites advertise their RSS features pretty overtly. Some, however, are subtle about it. If you use Mozilla’s Firefox browser — which many people are nowadays because Internet Explorer is largely a great way to mess up your computer — an RSS-enabled site will result in this icon appearing in the corner of your browser window:

Not only does that let you know the site has a feed available, clicking on it also allows you to make use of Firefox’s “Live Bookmark” feature. Which, despite not being as useful — in my opinion — as a full-featured RSS reader program, is still worth checking out.

What about Livejournal

Livejournal is a strange case, as they almost go out of their way to make it seem like they do not provide RSS feeds for their journals, preferring, I suspect, people to use the “Friends page” option to view their favourite journals. This system misses much of the usefulness of RSS, however, as it doesn’t tell you when sites are updated without first visiting the friends page and, also, can force you to wade through one of your “friend’s” sixteen-post series featuring over 200 pictures of their wild trip to Wyoming.

Livejournal RSS feeds are always available at the following address:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/USERNAME/data/rss

So, for example, my never-used journal’s RSS feed is found at http://www.livejournal.com/users/graphicmatt/data/rss. Just plug in the username of any of the journals you enjoy reading SO DAMN MUCH that you need to know instantly when they are updated.

Friends-only livejournals can be trickier, because they require you to be logged in to view them. In the cases where you want to add a friends-only journal to your RSS list, the feed should be added like this:

http://ljusername:ljpassword@www.livejournal.com/users/USERNAME/data/rss?auth=digest

Got that? It’s a bit complicated. Put YOUR livejournal username and password where ‘ljusername’ and ‘lipassword’ are above, replace the USERNAME field with the user whose journal you want to read, and suffix the whole thing with “auth=digest”.

Why do I really need this?

I don’t know! You might not! But judging from the number of programs who have implemented or are planning on implementing RSS, it’s a technology that holds appeal to a large number of people. In an age where people are checking upwards of 20 to 30 (or more) websites for updates per day, having the ability to easily have the website tell YOU when they’ve updated can be a tremendous time-saver. And also a good way to prevent you from forgetting about a site you would like to check every day, but can’t always keep in your mind to do so.

But maybe you don’t care. And that’s okay! At least now you know what RSS is. You can use that fact to impress friends and colleagues at various social functions. You will probably score because of it. There is nothing women find sexier than knowledge of news aggregation web standards.

RSS at GraphicMatt

To conclude: hey, this site has an RSS feed. Two of them in fact, the two links on the right sidebar allow you to subscribe to RSS feeds that will tell you when a new article is added to this site, and also when a new comment is added to the site. It’s a great way to get your daily (or weekly!) dose of me without delay. Because — if I may paraphrase the bard for a second — you don’t want to wait, for your life to be over, for… okay, this joke is lame.

This will probably be the most educational thing posted all year at graphicmatt.com, so cherish it. You never know when it might save your life.

Cum Laude,
Matt