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@title What is RSS? What are feeds?

What is RSS? What are feeds?

Lots of websites have news or updates of some kind.

They also have a bunch of other things — a header at the top of the page, and maybe links and ads and widgets on the left or right (or both). And then some more stuff at the bottom of the page.

Like this imaginary squished-down web page:

Website diagram that shows the good part — where RSS comes from

The good part is the part in the middle — thats the part with the news. Thats the part that you read. Thats the part youre interested in.

And thats what RSS is — its just that part, minus the rest of the stuff.

Details

That “good part” is actually made available as a feed. A feed is just a specially-formatted text file that readers like NetNewsWire can read. The files look weird — they kind of look like the source behind web pages, with angle brackets and everything.

The important thing is: its NetNewsWires job to know how to read the feed. And its NetNewsWires job to show you what articles you havent read yet.

By doing this — by running NetNewsWire — you can let NetNewsWire find out when theres something new. You dont have to go to the websites and check to see if theres something new. You can save time, and not have to rely on your memory.

Types of feeds

People often talk or write about RSS — but sometimes they mention Atom, too. Atom does the same thing as RSS. Sometimes they mention the JSON Feed format, which does the same thing as RSS too.

If you see RSS or Atom or JSON Feed, just know that NetNewsWire handles all these, no problem.