| What is RSS |
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| Written by Administrator | |
| Sunday, 30 October 2005 | |
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RSS is a Web content syndication format. RSS HistoryRSS-aware programs called news aggregators are popular in the weblogging community. Many weblogs make content available in RSS. A news aggregator can help you keep up with all your favorite weblogs by checking their RSS feeds and displaying new items from each of them. But coders beware. The name "RSS" is an umbrella term for a format that spans several different versions of at least two different (but parallel) formats. The original RSS, version 0.90, was designed by Netscape as a format for building portals of headlines to mainstream news sites. It was deemed overly complex for its goals; a simpler version, 0.91, was proposed and subsequently dropped when Netscape lost interest in the portal-making business. But 0.91 was picked up by another vendor, UserLand Software, which intended to use it as the basis of its weblogging products and other web-based writing software.In the meantime, a third, non-commercial group split off and designed a new format based on what they perceived as the original guiding principles of RSS 0.90 (before it got simplified into 0.91). This format, which is based on RDF, is called RSS 1.0. But UserLand was not involved in designing this new format, and, as an advocate of simplifying 0.90, it was not happy when RSS 1.0 was announced. Instead of accepting RSS 1.0, UserLand continued to evolve the 0.9x branch, through versions 0.92, 0.93, 0.94, and finally 2.0. RSS SyntaxRSS defines an XML grammar (a set of HTML-like tags) for sharing news. Each RSS text file contains both static information about your site, plus dynamic information about your new stories, all surrounded by matching start and end tags. Each story is defined by an <item> tag, which contains a headline TITLE, URL, and DESCRIPTION. Here's an example: ... <item> <title>RSS Resources</title> <link>http://www.webreference.com/authoring/languages/xml/rss/</link> <description>Defined in XML, the Rich Site Summary (RSS) format has quietly become a dominant format for distributing headlines on the Web. Our list of links gives you the tools, tips and tutorials you need to get started using RSS. 0323</description> </item> ...
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| Last Updated ( Sunday, 30 October 2005 ) |
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