What problem does RSS solve?
Most people are interested in many websites whose content changes on an unpredictable
schedule. Examples of such websites are news sites, community organisation information pages,
product information pages, medical websites, weblogs and event notices. Repeatedly checking
each website to see if there is any new content can be very tedious.
E-mail notification of changes was an early solution to this problem. Unfortunately,
when you receive e-mail notifications from multiple websites they are usually disorganised
and can get overwhelming, and are often mistaken for spam.
RSS is a better way to be notified of new and changed content. Notifications of changes
to multiple websites are handled easily, and the results are presented to you well organised
and distinct from e-mail.
How does RSS work?
RSS works by having the website author maintain a list of notifications on their
website in a standard way. This list of notifications is called an RSS feed. People who
are interested in finding out the latest headlines or changes can check this list. Special
computer programs called RSS aggregators have been developed that automatically access the
RSS feeds of websites you care about on your behalf and organize the results for you.
(RSS feeds and aggregators are also sometimes called RSS channels and RSS readers.)
Producing an RSS feed is an important feature of websites, but as yet only larger
organisations provide this feature; including major news organisations such as the New
York Times, the BBC, and Reuters, as well as many weblogs.
What information does RSS provide?
RSS is made up of a list of items (i.e. reviews) presented in order from newest
to oldest. Each item usually consists of a title describing the item along with a more
complete description and a link to a Web page with the actual information being described.
Sometimes this description is the full information you want to read (such as the content of
a weblog post) and sometimes it is just a summary.
The RSS information is placed into a single file on a website in a manner similar
to normal Web pages. However, the information is coded in a computer language for use by a
program (the RSS aggregator).
Some websites take the trouble of translating the computer code to human language,
giving their visitors the opportunity of being able to read the RSS files with or without
the use of RSS aggregator.