Web Browsing With RSS

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a family of web feed formats with which it is possible to distribute up-to-date web content from one web site to thousands of other web sites around the world. RSS allows fast browsing for news and updates. To operate in RSS, one should have knowledge of HTML and XML, since RSS is written in XML. RSS defines an easy way to share and view headlines and content and the files can be automatically updated.

This is how the RSS operation is undertaken: First, create an RSS document and save it with an .xml extension. Then, upload the file to your website. Next, register with an RSS aggregator. Each day the aggregator searches the registered websites for RSS documents, verifies the link, and displays information about the feed so clients can link to documents that interest them.

Now a bit about the RSS document creation. Consider a sample RSS document:

The first line in the document – the XML declaration – defines the XML version and the character encoding used in the document. In this case the document conforms to the 1.0 specification of XML and uses the ISO-8859-1 character set. The next line is the RSS declaration which identifies that this is an RSS document. The next line contains the <channel> element. This element is used to describe the RSS feed. Each <channel> element can have one or more <item> elements. Each <item> element defines an article or “story” in the RSS feed. Finally, the two last lines close the <channel> and <rss> elements.

With RSS, information on the internet becomes easier to find, and web developers can spread their information more easily.