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What are RSS Feeds?
RSS
feeds allow you to see when websites including the Ringwood
Town Council web site have added new content to the site.
You can get the latest headlines audio and video in one
place, as soon as they are published, without having
to visit the website (s) you have taken the feed from.
There is some discussion
as to what RSS stands for, but most people plump for
'Really Simple Syndication'. In essence, the feeds
themselves are just web pages, designed to be read
by computers rather than people.
How do I start using the
feed?
In general, the first thing you need is something
called a RSS reader. This is a piece of software that
checks the RSS Feeds and lets you read any new articles
that have been added. There are many different versions,
some of which are accessed using a browser, and some
of which are downloadable applications.
Browser-based RSS readers let you catch up with
your RSS feed subscriptions from any computer, whereas
downloadable applications let you store them on your
main computer, in the same way that you either download
your e-mail using Outlook, or keep it on a web-based
service like Hotmail.
Once you have chosen an RSS reader, all you have
to do is to decide what content you want it to receive.
For example, if you would like the latest Ringwood
Town Council web site feed, simply click on the an
orange button at the top of this page.
If you click on the button you can subscribe to
the feed in various ways, including by dragging the
URL of the feed into your RSS reader or by cutting
and pasting the same URL into a new feed in your
RSS reader. Most sites that offer feeds use a similar
orange button, but some may just have a normal web
link.
Some browsers, including Firefox, Opera and Safari,
automatically check for feeds for you when you visit
a website, and display an icon when they find one.
This can make subscribing to feeds much easier. For
more details on these, please check their websites.
(See Related Links below).
How do I get sn RSS reader?
There
is a range of different news readers available and
new versions are appearing all the time. Different
RSS readers work on different operating systems,
so you will need to choose one that will work with
your computer. (Please
see the listing below)
NET framework for Windows users.
If you have never run a RSS Reader before on your
system, that is not running Windows 2003 or the
latest Windows XP version and never installed the
free Microsoft .NET framework (What
is Microsoft .NET framework?) you first need to download and install it.
The easiest way is to run Windows
update or otherwise visit Microsoft
- How to Get the .NET Framework 1.1.
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