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How to... |
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 How
to subscribe to an RSS feed in IE7
Finally, RSS feeds can be subscribed to and read
natively in Internet Explorer. Firefox has
long had this feature, but Internet Explorer has
finally caught up. This piece will assume you
know nothing about RSS, news feeds, or receiving
podcasts, for that matter, and will first
explain what they are, then explain how to view,
subscribe and manage them in IE7. Finally, not
to leave the more advanced user out, we will
describe how to export your feed subscriptions from
your current news reader (we use Newsgator at
newsgator.com as an example) and import those feeds
into IE using an OPML (Outline Processor Markup
Language) file. Beginners can forget this
part.
What does RSS stand for? It depends on who
you talk to, but for our purposes we will go with
the widely accepted convention "Really Simple
Syndication." Surely you've seen all those
little orange buttons (called chicklets) all over the Internet that say
XML, or RSS, or ATOM, or POD or just a little orange
thing with curved lines on it, like this:
First of all, why are there so many of them? As
always, it has to do with a proliferation of standards.
There are two basic types of RSS feeds, RSS and Atom.
For the purposes of our discussion, they are the same.
Podcasts are also just an RSS feed with an audio
enclosure, but more on that later.
Linked to these buttons is the subscription URL for
an RSS feed. The subscription URL points to an XML
file, somewhere on some web server, that contains a
description of the feed, it's author, name,
description, copyright, an entry for each item in the
feed, date and time stamped, and any enclosures each
item may have (like audio files, which makes the feed a
"podcast."
Don't worry about all the technicalities. The
simple version of this story is that an RSS feed (often
called a "news" feed) is a two part affair: one
part is the XML file mentioned above that contains
headlines and pointers to the web address of the news
stories, and the other part is a program that will check
these XML files for you, once you have "subscribed" to
them, and let you know when new items have been added.
For standard RSS feeds these programs are called "news
aggregators;" for podcasts, they are called
"podcatchers." They do the same thing, except
podcatchers have specialized functions for manipulating
the audio attachments to the feed.
Now, back to IE7. In the past (with version
IE6) when you clicked on one of these chicklets you
would see a screen of incomprehensible gibberish--the
actual XML tags contained in the XML file for the news
feed. For IE6 the only reason the chicklets
existed was so that you could right-click them, copy
their subscription address, and paste it into your news
aggregator--a process called "subscription." With
IE7, when you click on a chicklet, you get nicely
formatted text (the contents of the news item), with a
link to the article itself and an offer to add a
subscription to the news feed to your browser, like
this:
Click the "Subscribe to this feed" link, and you will
see the following dialog:
If you have already created a folder structure, the
drop-down in the "Create in:" field will contain a list
of your folders, but because you are a beginner at this,
you will not yet have created a folder structure.
(You can create a folder for your feed at this time, by
clicking the "New folder" button). Click the
Subscribe button to subscribe.
Now, open your list of feeds by clicking the little
star next to the tabs at the top of your browser:
Now click the "Feeds" button in the fold-out panel to
see a list of your feeds (notice that Favorites, Feeds,
and History all share this area in IE7)
A list of all the feeds you subscribe to will appear.
They will only be organized in folders if you have
organized them that way, which is usually something you
do not get around to doing until you have subscribed to
a number of feeds. You will see the feed you
subscribed to at the bottom of the list (unless you put
it in a folder as noted above). Notice that when
you hover your cursor over the feed title a little
refresh icon appears on the right. Click the
refresh icon to force an update of the latest feed
items.
By the way, to create a folder, right-click a feed
title and choose "Create New Folder" from the popup
menu.
Feeds and folders can be arranged by dragging them
around.
The default period set for refreshing feeds in IE7 is
every day. This is often too long a period.
You can cotrol the overall default period on all feeds
by selecting Tools > Internet Options > Content >
Settings button:
The feed setting dialog, as you can see, also
contains other configurations. Unread feeds are
displayed in bold, read feeds in regular type. If
you get tired of hearing the whoop IE makes when
detecting a feed, you turn it off with this dialog.
You can also configure the refresh rate on individual
feeds by clicking the feed properties link when viewing
the feed within IE:
Note also that you can select "Automatically download
attached files." Any sort of document can be
attached to a feed item, so be careful with this.
IE7 will automatically download audio enclosures to
podcasts if you subscribe to them, and all you need to
do to play them is click on the audio link right in IE:
To get rid of an RSS feed or podcast from IE7, simply
click its title and choose delete.
What if you're an old pro and have a set of feeds
already developed in a news aggregator program? It
is simple to import them into IE7 if the news aggregator
you are using supports exporting your feeds as an OPML
file. Most do.
First, login to your news aggregator and export your
feeds list as an opml file. Then, open IE7 and
choose File > Import and Export... > Import Feeds >
Navigate to the exported opml file and choose to import
it. The file hierarchy you had created will be
retained. The opml file is a simple XML file, so
if you need to edit it to eliminate some feeds, it is
easy to do.
One more nice little feature in IE7. If you
organize your feeds into folders, then hover your mouse
over the folder in the feed list, you will see an arrow
appear next to the folder. Click the arrow and it
will open all the feeds on tabs in the browser.
Nice.
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