RSS—a whole new way to communicate
Published: May 26, 2006
By Sandi Hardmeier
RSS, also known as Really Simple Syndication, Rich Site Summary or RDF Site Summary, has been around since 1999 in various forms.
Netscape experimented with RSS via their "My Netscape" portal back in 1999 and 2000, but the experiment did not last. Netscape lost interest in RSS and XML (Extensible Markup Language), but thankfully the formats were not destined to fall into obscurity.
An RSS page is a specially coded XML file (called a "feed") that can be registered with a special type of Web service called an Aggregator. Aggregators are specially designed programs that monitor RSS feeds and provide a centralized subscription facility. Internet surfers can use an Aggregator to select and subscribe to their choice of feed, read the latest content, and be automatically notified when new content is added. There are various types of Aggregators available today: stand alone programs, plug-ins for your Web browser, or online services accessed via a Web page.
Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 Preview was the first build available to the public at large that showcased how Web feeds (the Internet Explorer name for RSS) work in Internet Explorer 7. It is important to note that Internet Explorer 7 is not trying to be a fully featured Aggregator—rather, the goal is to make Web feeds easily accessible to everybody. Power users who want a full search and subscription facility will, of course, prefer to continue to use a dedicated Aggregator.
Why are Web feeds so popular?
Well, first of all, Web feeds are comparatively low bandwidth. Virtually all of the fluff and extraneous content is stripped out, leaving us with just the important stuff—the text of the article and perhaps some screen shots or multimedia files for download. There are no advertisements, banner ads, pop-ups, and animated graphics trying to grab our attention.
Ok, so how does this Web feed thing work?
As mentioned above, one of the goals for Internet Explorer 7 is to make the amazing resource that is Web feeds easily accessible to all. Web sites that have a Web feed traditionally display one of two icons, 
or 
.
Before Internet Explorer 7, we would click on one of those buttons and if our Web browser supported Web feeds, or if we had an RSS Reader installed, we would be able to access the content. This process was a sometimes-convoluted routine that could be confusing to those unfamiliar with Web feeds. Many users, when confronted by a Web feed for the first time, have gone away thinking that their Web browser, or the Web site, was broken because all they saw when they clicked on the orange button was something similar to this:
Without Internet Explorer 7 or an appropriate Reader, many users were unable to access Web feeds.
If a Web site has a special Link element in the source code, Internet Explorer 7 will alert the user to the linked Web feeds on the page. The Web Feed icon on the toolbar will light up and look slightly different depending on whether the Web feed has been previously encountered.
Note the subtle difference in the two preceding Feed icons.
Tip: The code recognized by Internet Explorer 7 as a valid Web feed is quite simple:
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="Title of Web Feed" href="URL of Web Feed"/>
If we look closely at the Web Feed icon on the left, we can see a starburst (also known as a glimmer) on the top right-hand corner. The Web Feed title has also been appended with the word "new." Click on the drop down menu entry to go directly to the Web feed that has been detected.
Sometimes a page will have more than one Web feed, in which case Internet Explorer 7 will offer a menu entry for every feed that is available:
Pages with multiple Web feeds are available in Internet Explorer 7.
After selecting a feed, we are given the opportunity to subscribe to the Feed we are viewing.
Click on Subscribe to this feed to subscribe to a Web feed.
Once we click on the Subscribe to this feed link we are presented with the Feed Subscription window. We can choose a Feed folder and choose whether or not to automatically download attachments.
Internet Explorer 7 makes it easy to subscribe to a Web feed.
Once we have subscribed, we are given the opportunity to view the new Feed subscription in the Favorites Center.
Once we subscribe to a feed, we can check it out immediately in the Favorites Center.
Unlike standard Web page Favorites, when we subscribe to a Web feed, Internet Explorer 7 will automatically check the feed for updates. If an update is detected, the feed entry will turn to bold font. By pinning the feed pane open, we will know immediately if new content is detected.
A bold font indicates that a Web feed has new content.
The default Refresh frequency for Web feeds is once per day, but this is easily changed by right clicking on any feed, then selecting Properties. I find that high traffic sites, such as news sites, work very well with a 15-minute refresh. That said, as a rule I am extremely busy and my free time online is very limited. Also, the vast majority of Web feeds I have subscribed to have a security focus—virus announcements, warnings of security vulnerabilities, reports about the latest phishing scam, and other security features. Therefore, I have set all of my feeds at 15 minutes, although some sites (including spaces.msn.com) stipulate a "site minimum" of 60 minutes between checks. As we can see from the dialogue box below, we can automatically download enclosures (most often multimedia files such a podcasts and other sound bytes). Personally, I do not automatically download enclosures because they may not interest me and because automatically downloading files without checking what they are first could be, in my personal opinion, a security risk. Internet Explorer 7, by default, does not automatically download enclosures.
We can control how often a Web feed is checked for updates, whether to download enclosures, and how many items (posts) to keep on our computers.
Reading a Web feed
Internet Explorer 7 allows us to filter Web feeds in various ways. We can choose to display only unread articles, we can sort by date or by title, and we can choose to filter by category, simply by clicking on the filter of choice.
Unlike traditional Web pages, Web feeds give us the power to manipulate content to suit our requirements.
By the way, if you are viewing a Web feed and you want to view the traditional HTML version, simply click on the title of the Web feed.
We can swap over to a traditional HTML page at any time, simply by clicking on a Blog Title or a Blog Entry title.
So, that's all there is to using Web feeds. Internet Explorer 7 will tell us if there is a Web feed on a page. We click on a link to view the Web feed, subscribe if we wish, and will automatically be alerted if there are any changes to the page.
Web feeds are going to open up a whole new world of easy-to-access, always-up-to-date content for the casual Web surfer. I've only been using Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 for a few weeks, yet I already miss it when I am at the office and have to drop back to Internet Explorer 6. I especially miss my Web feeds. I'll be very pleased when the finalized Internet Explorer 7 is released to the public at large.
