[Frequently Asked Questions] RSS : What is it and how do I use it?

What? RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication or also Rich Site Summary. In fact, it's a XML-application that's been developed to transfer, efficiently and fast, a lot of information. Especially news sites and weblogs make good use of it.

The usage is very simple. You just have to install a RSS-compatible program. These days there's a multitude of applications that can do this for you.

Experienced users won't need any further explanation. If you are you not familiar with RSS? Then Feedreader is a recommendation. You can download it here. It has a very intuitive, user-friendly interface. To open a certain newsfeed, copy the RSS-shortcut of the site you are interested in and open it in Feedreader. Now you can start reading to you hearts content!

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Thunderbird, the free mail program of the Mozilla community supports RSS by default. How do you set it up?

In the menu 'Edit' open 'Accounts Settings'. Next you choose 'Add account' en select 'RSS News & Bolgs'. Create a name for this account. Choose whatever you want or use the default 'News & Blogs'. Click on 'Finished'. In the main screen of Thunderbird, you will now see your new RSS account. Click with your right mouse button on the icon and select 'Subscriptions', 'Add' and in 'Feed URL', put http://www.blokwatch.be/rss. All done ....

People who only use Firefox of the Mozilla community are advised to download a modified extension at http://sage.mozdev.org. 'Sage' provides a userfriendly RSS-reader. On top of that, there's no need to download a new program, just this extension for Firefox.