What is RSS?

Back in 1995, there weren't very many websites and the ones that did exist didn't tend to be updated all that often. Over time, though, more and more people started creating useful and up-to-date sites on the net. For some people, it came to be a big problem: they would have folders filled with bookmarks, and they would try to visit each of those sites periodically to see what was new.

Even back in 1995, it would not have been too hard to make the computer automatically grab each of those web pages periodically. The problem that arose was that it was very difficult for the computer to figure out if there was something genuinely new at a site for you.

That's where RSS comes in. RSS is generally thought to stand for "Really Simple Syndication", but has also stood for "Rich Site Summary" and "RDF Site Summary". RSS is the name used for a file that is a computer-understandable way to describe what is new on a site. For each new item that appears on a site, the RSS file can contain things like title, author, an excerpt, the full text, date of publication and category. This format provides quite a bit of flexibility for programs like Zesty News.

Not everyone was happy with RSS, and some people got together and created "Atom", which serves a similar purpose but is styled a bit differently. When browsing around on sites, it's not uncommon to see links to RSS feeds, Atom feeds and little orange icons that say "XML". These are the types of sites you can subscribe to in Zesty News. Internet Explorer, with the Zesty toolbar, Firefox and Safari 2.0 all automatically detect these feeds and put their own special icons up to let you know that you can subscribe to that site.

Learn more about Zesty News.