All About RSS

What's the Deal with the FFSC News Page?

The FFSC news page has been transformed into a special web page, called an RSS feed, that provides up-to-the-minute news and updates and gets automatically updated when viewed with your web browser. When you click on News in the main menu of this page or click on the little, orange button in the upper right column of this page, your web browser will display the contents of the FFSC News page in its special form. You can then "bookmark" this special page by subscribing to the RSS feed.

What is RSS?

RSS is a relatively new on-line technique that allows you to read news and updates from multiple web sites all from one place, typically with a web browser, feed reader program, or even an iPod. Imagine, you want to read the latest news headlines from the BBC, CNN, MacWorld, Alaska's Web Center 11 and the Fairbanks Figure Skating Club. You would have to visit all five web sites and click through tens of pages to hunt for the news articles or information that interest you. Such nonsense is no longer required with RSS. It is now quite easy to view news articles from multiple web sites, including the Fairbanks Figure Skating Club. It is up to you whether to use a feed reader program or your web browser to subscribe to and read RSS feeds. What are RSS feeds, you ask? RSS feeds are special web pages that bring news content to you, and are formatted to gather and distribute content from multiple sources across the Web, including newspapers, magazines, and blogs. This page provides links to news readers and web browsers available for Windows PC , Linux , and Mac operating systems.

How Can I Subscribe to an RSS Feed?

There are two common ways to subscribe to an RSS feed: with a web browser that supports RSS or a stand-alone RSS feed reader (see below). When you visit a web page that offers RSS feeds, the site will most likely provide a little icon (button) that you can click that lets you subscribe to the RSS feed. RSS feeds may be distinguished by a variety of icons, like , , , or .

Free, RSS Feed Readers

News readers are small programs that check RSS feeds from any number of web sites and let you read any new articles that have been recently added. They typically do a better job than your web browser when it comes to organizing the hundreds of new headlines that get updated every day from sites like CNN and BBC News, for example. These programs must be downloaded and installed onto your computer. Initially, you will have to subscribe to the various RSS feeds that interest you (see below).

Download and Installation Required

• Akregator (KDE Desktop) or Liferea (Gnome Desktop)
• Feedreader
• RSSOwl
• Vienna

Online: No Download or Installation Required

The advantages of using online/web-based news readers include not having to install any software and your news feeds are accessible from any computer with a web browser. The online news readers listed below require you to set up an account.

• Bloglines RSS Reader
• Google Reader
• NewsGator Online

Browsers That Support RSS

All of the browsers listed below (home pages provided) automatically check for feeds for you when you visit a website, and usually display an orange icon when they find one (Firefox and Internet Explorer 7 screen shots). These browsers also automatically update the RSS feeds once they become available, like Live Bookmarks in Mozilla Firefox.

	Mozilla Firefox Mozilla Firefox home page Live Bookmarks and options Sage: a feed reader extension for Firefox
	Opera Opera home page How to subscribe with video tutorial
	Apple Safari Apple Safari home page and RSS overview Note: The Apple Safari web browser comes preinstalled with the MacOS operating system.
	Internet Explorer 7 Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 home page How to subscribe Note: Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser comes preinstalled with the Windows operating system, but only Internet Explorer 7 provides RSS support; Internet Explorer 6 does not.

FFSC News on Your Mobile Gadget

Many websites look great on your giant desktop monitor or laptop screen, but websites are just now starting to provide mobile friendly versions that look decent on the small screens of mobile phones, the iPod Touch, and other mobile gadgets that connect to the internet. The FFSC now provides a scaled-down, custom version of its news page that is much easier to read and navigate with a mobile device. A new link, with the icon has been provided in the upper, right-hand column of the site to allow easy access to FFSC News with any mobile device. Simply bookmark the link or navigate to that page with the browser on your mobile device.