RSS is short for Really Simple Syndication according to the standard which defines it. It is used by many web sites to publish news about changes to to the site. So for a news organisation that would mean the news head-lines and a short introduction to each headline. For a church or sports club it may be a list of events, or results. This allows you to surf the web in a more selective way than going through the front pages of a site every time you want a news update.
Because of the way RSS can summarise a site's contents it is sometimes said that RSS stands for Rich Site Summary. Most RSS readers will let you skim through a summary of a news site without any annoying adds or pop-ups. Once you select an item to read you are transferred to the originating web site. You will then have the normal web page from that site, including any ads or pop-ups.
You can make use of RSS feeds using a RSS reader such as "RSS Reader", "RSS Bandit", "Rss Browser" (See further down) or using the "Live Update" feature of the FireFox web browser.
The FireFox web browser
you to add RSS feed to your bookmarks, and then when you click on that book mark you'll get
a list of titles to select from. If you notice the orange "Live Update" logo to the right of
a URL in your browser it means that that site supports Live Update. Click on that logo to
add the site to your list of updates - that simple!
A RSS browser appears as a web browser, but is aware of RSS feeds. Some act as an add-in to your existing web browser and others encapsulate a web browser inside of themselves. RSS Browser is an example of this last technique and appears as follows:
The program is split into:
One of our members wrote a RSS browser which you can download. (104 byte) St Davids in the Fields is therefore unable to provide technical support for it beyond what is contained in these pages. It is provided as a convenience to members who want to keep up to date with our events. But anyone else who may find it useful is welcome to use it.