20.2. RSS: The Missing Manual

20.2. RSS: The Missing Manual In the beginning, the Internet was an informational Garden of Eden. There were no bannerads, pop-ups, flashy animations, or spam messages. Back then, people thought the Internet was the greatest idea ever.
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20.2. RSS: The Missing Manual20.2. RSS: The Missing ManualIn the beginning, the Internet was an informational Garden of Eden. There were nobannerads, pop-ups, flashy animations, or spam messages. Back then, people thought theInternet was the greatest idea ever.Those days, unfortunately, are long gone. Web browsing now entails a constant battleagainst intrusive advertising and annoying animations. And with the proliferation of Websites of every kind—from news sites to personal weblogs (blogs)—just reading yourfavorite sites can become a full-time job.Enter RSS, a technology that lets you subscribe to feeds—summary blurbs provided bythousands of sources around the world, from Reuters to Apple to your nerdy nextdoorneighbor. You use a program like Safari to subscribe to updates from such feeds, andthen read any new articles or postings at your leisure.The result: You spare yourself the tedium of checking for updates manually, plus you getto read short summaries of new articles without ads and blinking animations. And if youwant to read a full article, you can click its link in the RSS feed to jump straight to themain Web site.Figure 20-9. The Length slider controls how much text appears for each RSS blurb; if you drag it all the way to the left, youre left with nothing but headlines. Tochange the number and order of the articles being displayed, use the search options on the right. And if you feel a sudden desire to tell your friends about an amazingRSS feed youve just discovered, use the Mail Link to This Page link in the lower- right section of the window.Note: RSS either stands for Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication. Eachabbreviation explains one aspect of RSS—either its summarizing talent or its simplicity.20.2.1. Viewing an RSS FeedSo how do you sign up for these free, automatic RSS broadcasts? Watch your addressbar as youre surfing the Web. When you see a blue RSS button appear (identified back inFigure 20-1), Safari is telling you, This site has an RSS feed available.To see what the fuss is all about, click that button. Safari switches into RSS-viewingmode, as shown in Figure 20-9.At this point, you have two choices: • Add the RSSfeed as a bookmark. Use the Bookmarks Add Bookmark command, and add the feed to your Bookmarks menu, Bookmarks bar, or Mail (Section 19.7) as you would any Web page. From now on, youll be able to see whether the RSS feed has had any new articles posted—without actually having to visit the site. Figure 20-10 (top) has the details. • Close the RSS feed altogether. To do so, just click the RSS button again. Youre left back where you started, at whatever Web page you were visiting.20.2.2. RSS TricksRSS is a tremendously flexible and powerful technology, especially in Safari. The funnever ends, as these tricks illustrate.20.2.2.1. Creating RSS summariesIf you create a new bookmark folder (Section 20.1.2.1) and fill it with RSS feeds, you cansee the total number of new articles right next to the folders name (Figure 20-10,bottom). You might create a folder of Mac news feeds, for instance, so you knowwhenever theres a important event in the Mac world.From then on, by clicking the folders name (and opening its pop-up menu), you can seewhich feeds have new articles; theyre the ones with numbers next to their names. If you -click a bookmark folders name—in either the Bookmarks bar or the Bookmarksmenu—Safari shows you all the feeds, neatly collated into one big, easily digestible listfor your perusing pleasure. (If youre billing by the hour, you can also choose View AllRSS Articles from the folders pop-up menu to achieve the same effect.)Tip: To make the merged list more useful, click New under the Sort By heading. NowSafari displays any new articles at the top of the list, regardless of what site they camefrom, so you dont have to hunt through the list for new articles yourself.20.2.2.2. The personal clipping serviceThe search box at the right of any RSS-viewing window works pretty much as youdexpect: It narrows down the list of articles to only those that contain your search terms.But thats barely scratching the surface of the search fields power. If youve adopted thefeed-merging trick described above, the Search box can search several feeds at once—perfect, for example, if you want to see all the news from Mac sites that has to do withiTunes.Now how much would you pay? But get this—you can then save the search itself as abookmark. Use the Bookmark This Search link at the lower-right corner of the window.Give the bookmark a name, choose where it should appear in Safari, and then click Add.Youve just turned Safari into a high-tech personal clipping service. With one click onyour new bookmark, you can search all your favorite news sources simulta ...