What is RSS?
A non-technical explanation of RSS
RSS is a data format for syndicating content on the World Wide Web. Technically, there are a few different versions of RSS in existence and depending on who you’re talking to, RSS is an acronym for a few different things:
- Really Simple Syndication
- Rich Site Summary
- RDF Site Summary
How RSS works
RSS works by taking a set of information and breaking it down into a collection of identifable items. For example, an RSS feed for a newspaper’s site might gather up the most recently published stories and break them down so the RSS file contains one RSS item for each headline. The end result is an RSS feed of the newspaper’s recently published headlines.
The RSS feed for Of Zen and Computing might be visualized like this:
| Title | Link | Date Published |
| How to right-click on a Mac | http://www.ofzenandcomputing.com/zanswers/128 | Sun, 09 Jul 2006 16:38:47 +0000 |
| What cookies are and how to delete them | http://www.ofzenandcomputing.com/zanswers/127 | Thu, 29 Jun 2006 05:04:22 +0000 |
| The difference between a PC and a Mac | http://www.ofzenandcomputing.com/zanswers/126 | Thu, 29 Jun 2006 04:24:16 +0000 |
* This is a simplified visualization of the items in an RSS feed. An actual RSS feed contains more details such as the author, an excerpt or teaser paragraph, and categories. Some feeds may even carry the full content of their item.
How people and services make use of RSS feeds
Software can be used to download RSS feeds and work with the data they contain. People can stay abreast of updates to RSS-enabled sites by using a program called an aggregator or a feed reader to subscribe to those sites’ RSS feeds and regularly deliver the updates that are published. Here’s what the RSS headlines for Of Zen and Computing look like, presented by an RSS feed reader that has just downloaded them:
Services such as Google’s Personalized Homepage obtain the information they offer by downloading RSS feeds of the sites that you have subscribed to. The same Of Zen and Computing headlines mentioned earlier would appear on a Google Personalized Homepage like so:
Uses for RSS
RSS is not limited to delivering the news. Any sort of data that can be broken down and organized with a list can be syndicated with RSS. Examples:
- Traffic information
- Airline delays
- Real Estate listings
- Sports scores
- Weather updates
Identifying RSS-enabled sites
Most RSS-enabled sites will display an orange RSS icon either in the address bar of your browser, alongside links to their feeds, or both.
Some RSS software
- Mozilla Thunderbird, cross-platform
- SharpReader RSS Aggregator, Windows
- NetNewsWire, Mac
Some RSS services
This article was adapted from “A non-technical explanation of RSS” from Of Zen and Computing
