Imagine if your favourite websites appeared in your email, for you to read when you wanted? 

 

 

This article focuses on how to use RSS to make it easier for you to read your favourite websites.  But it's not the only use - for a full description of RSS, check out this link to Wikipedia.

 

In the toolbar of your browser, you might have noticed a little symbol like this :   If its greyed out, then RSS isn't enabled on the site you are looking at.  But .. when it's orange, that means that the site has an RSS feed that you can subscribe to.  We're going to show you how to use this to bring the site's updates into your email automatically.

 

If you click on the orange link,

 you'll see the RSS feed (or feeds if there are more than one on the page) listed.  Simply click on the feed you are interested in to preview it.

 

 

Now, you can easily subscribe to the feed by clcking on the 'subscribe' link we've marked above.  This will add the link to your feeds in your browser, and it'll look like this :

  

In the same way as looking at your 'favourites', you can now also view the articles in your favourite news sites or blogs.  And, you can even do it offline!  When your computer is online, it automatically seeks out your favourite feeds and downloads them ready for you!

 

However, most people find it easier to read their RSS news feeds in a feedreader.  I like using Outlook for this. If you look in your folders, you'll see your news feeds presented as if they were an ordinary email folder, and you can simply view them from there :-

 

 

In fact, Outlook lets you set up feeds directly - go to the 'Tools' menu, choose "Account Settings" and put the details directly into the 'RSS' section.

 

Happy RSSing!