Main Menu
RSS News Feed from the Co-op College
What is an RSS News Feed?
RSS allows you to see when sites from all over the internet have added new content to their news feed. You can get the latest headlines and articles in one place, as soon as they are published, without having to visit each site.
RSS takes the hassle out of staying up-to-date, by showing you the very latest information that you are interested in. RSS feeds are, essentially, just web pages designed to be read by computers rather than people.
Not all websites currently provide RSS, but it is growing rapidly in popularity and many, including the Guardian and BBC, provide it.
How do I start using RSS feeds?
In general, the first thing you need is a piece of software that will recognise RSS and check the RSS feeds you choose. There are versions of software available, some of which are used in conjunction with a web browser and others that are separate applications.
Once you have chosen a news reader, all you have to do is to decide what content you want to receive in your news reader, by finding and subscribing to the relevant RSS feeds. For example, if you would like the latest BBC News stories, simply visit the News section of the BBC website and you will notice an orange RSS button. Other sites may just have a normal web link to the feed.
If you click on the button or the link you can subscribe to the feed.
Some browsers, including Opera, Firefox and Safari, automatically check for RSS feeds for you when you visit a website, and display an icon when they find one. This can make subscribing to RSS feeds much easier. For more details on these, please check their websites.
What is Opera?
Opera is a free web browser for a number of operating systems including Windows and Mac OSX. It is available from http://www.opera.com/index.dml. The latest version has an RSS news reader built into it.
What is Firefox?
Firefox is a free web browser for Windows, Mac OSX and Linux i686 operating systems. It available from http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all.html. The latest version has an RSS news reader built into it.
What is Safari?
Safari is the default web browser supplied with Apple Macintosh computers.
How do I get a news reader?
There is a range of different news readers available and new versions are appearing all the time.
Different news readers work on different operating systems, so you will need to choose one that will work with your computer. For example, Newz Crawler and FeedDemon are available for Windows PCs and NetNewsWire and Newsfire are available for Apple computers.
Note: This information is provided in good faith for general guidance only.