Posted by finelinebob on May 7, 2004, at 18:07:07
In reply to Re: RSS, anyone? » finelinebob, posted by noa on May 7, 2004, at 17:39:58
Yo Noa! I'll fill you in about me on 2000 once Dr. Bob gets this alias okayed.
First, the short answer: news readers let you read headlines of stories posted to web sites without actually having to visit the site. If you see a headline you want to read more about, clicking on the headline in the news reader opens up the full article (in a web browser or in the reader, if it can display web pages).
News readers -- the new generation of them that is, for those who remember Usenet -- read special web pages using a language called RSS. Web sites can use RSS to post encapsulated versions of their news stories with links to the full articles. Generally, for a web site's RSS feed, it will list the most recent headlines posted on the site, with that headline linked to the full story. Some news readers also display a short description if the RSS feed includes one.
Wired online's RSS feed can be found at http://www.wired.com/news_drop/netcenter/netcenter.rdf . It's not much to look at in a regular web browser, but you can see the sort of info included. If you check out a site and they mention they have an XML feed or you see a little orange [ XML ] button, that's also a news feed.
Can't think of any Windows news readers out there, since I'm a Mac person, but maybe someone else out there has a link. My favorite Mac reader is called SlashDock and can be downloaded at http://homepage.mac.com/stas/slashdock.html . The most popular reader on the Mac side is probably NetNewsWire and you can find it at http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/internet_utilities/netnewswire.html .
poster:finelinebob
thread:344245
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20040307/msgs/344507.html