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Information about Web Feed

For Atom and RSS feeds from Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Syndication.




A web feed is a data format used for providing users with frequently updated content. Content distributors syndicate a web feed, thereby allowing users to subscribe to it. Making a collection of web feeds accessible in one spot is known as aggregation, which is performed by an Internet aggregator. A web feed is also sometimes referred to as a syndicated feed.

In the typical scenario of using web feeds, a content provider publishes a feed link on their site which end users can register with an aggregator program (also called a feed reader or a news reader) running on their own machines; doing this is usually as simple as dragging the link from the web browser to the aggregator. When instructed, the aggregator asks all the servers in its feed list if they have new content; if so, the aggregator either makes a note of the new content or downloads it. Aggregators can be scheduled to check for new content periodically.

The kinds of content delivered by a web feed are typically HTML (webpage content) or links to webpages and other kinds of digital media. Often when websites provide web feeds to notify users of content updates, they only include summaries in the web feed rather than the full content itself.

Web feeds are operated by many news websites, weblogs, schools, and podcasters.

Benefits

Web feeds have some advantages compared to receiving frequently published content via email:
  • When subscribing to a feed, users do not disclose their email address, so users are not increasing their exposure to threats associated with email: spam, viruses, phishing, and identity theft.
  • If users want to stop receiving news, they do not have to send an "unsubscribe" request; users can simply remove the feed from their aggregator.
  • The feed items are automatically "sorted" in the sense that each feed URL has its own sets of entries (unlike an email box, where all mails are in one big pile and email programs have to resort to complicated rules and pattern matching).
A "Feed Reader" is required for using Web Feeds. This tool works like an automated e-mail program, but no e-mail address is needed. The user subscribes to a particular web feed, and thereafter receives updated contents, every time updating takes place. Feed Readers may be online (like a webmail account) or offline. Recently a number of mobile readers have arrived to the market. An offline web feed is downloaded to the user's system. Feed readers are used in personalized home page services like iGoogle or My Yahoo or My MSN to put content such as news, weather and stock quotes appear on the user’s personal page. Content from other sites can also be added to that personalized page, again using feeds. Organizations can use a web feed server behind their firewall to distribute, manage and track the use of internal and external web feeds by users and groups. Other web-based tools are primarily dedicated to feed-reading only. One of the most popular web-based feed readers at this point is Bloglines, which is also free. Safari, Firefox, Internet Explorer 7.0, and many other web browsers allow receipts of feeds from the tool bar using Live Bookmarks, Favorites, and other techniques to integrate feed reading into a browser. Finally, there are desktop-based feed readers, e.g. Newsgator , FeedDemon and NetNewsWire. These are like email programs for web

Scraping

Usually a web feed is made available by the same entity that created the content. Typically the feed comes from the same place as the website. However not all websites provide a feed. Sometimes third parties will read the website and create a feed for it by scraping it. A Google search for 'screen scraping' finds tools that offer to perform this task. Scraping is controversial since it distributes the content in a manner that was not chosen by the content owner.

Technical definition

A web feed is a document (often XML-based) which contains content items with web links to longer versions. News websites and blogs are common sources for web feeds, but feeds are also used to deliver structured information ranging from weather data to "top ten" lists of hit tunes to search results. The two main web feed formats are RSS and Atom.

"Publishing a feed" and "syndication" are two of the more common terms used to describe making available a feed for an information source, such as a blog. Like syndicated print newspaper features or broadcast programs, web feed contents may be shared and republished by other websites. (For that reason, one popular definition of RSS is Really Simple Syndication.)

More often, feeds are subscribed to directly by users with aggregators or feed readers, which combine the contents of multiple web feeds for display on a single screen or series of screens. Some modern web browsers incorporate aggregator features. Depending on the aggregator, users typically subscribe to a feed by manually entering the URL of a feed or clicking a link in a web browser.

Web feeds are designed to be machine-readable rather than human-readable, which tends to be a source of confusion when people first encounter web feeds. This means that web feeds can also be used to automatically transfer information from one website to another, without any human intervention.

See also

References and external links

Atom

File extension: .atom, .xml
MIME type: application/atom+xml
Type of format: Syndication
Extended from: XML The name Atom applies to a pair of related standards.
..... Click the link for more information.
RSS

Screenshot of an RSS feed as seen in Mozilla Thunderbird
File extension: .rss, .xml
MIME type: application/rss+xml (Registration Being Prepared)[1]
Extended from: XML
..... Click the link for more information.
In computing, a feed aggregator, also known as a feed reader or simply as an aggregator, is client software or a Web application which aggregates syndicated web content such as news headlines, blogs, podcasts, and vlogs in a single location for easy viewing.
..... Click the link for more information.
The end-user is a popular concept in software engineering, referring to an abstraction of the group of persons who will ultimately operate a piece of software (i.e. the expected user or target-user).
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In computing, a feed aggregator, also known as a feed reader or simply as an aggregator, is client software or a Web application which aggregates syndicated web content such as news headlines, blogs, podcasts, and vlogs in a single location for easy viewing.
..... Click the link for more information.
A web browser is a software application that enables a user to display and interact with text, images, videos, music and other information typically located on a Web page at a website on the World Wide Web or a local area network.
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HTML (Hypertext Markup Language)

File extension: .html, .htm
MIME type: text/html
Type code: TEXT
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A website (alternatively, Web site or web site) is a collection of Web pages, images, videos or other digital assets that is hosted on one or several Web server(s), usually accessible via the Internet, cell phone or a LAN.
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blog (a portmanteau of web log) is a website where entries are written in chronological order and commonly displayed in reverse chronological order. "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.
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A podcast is a digital media file, or a related collection of such files, which is distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds for playback on portable media players and personal computers.
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phishing is an attempt to criminally and fraudulently acquire sensitive information, such as usernames, passwords and credit card details, by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. eBay, PayPal and online banks are common targets.
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Maintainer: Apple Inc.

OS: Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows

Use: Web browser
License: Proprietary EULA, LGPL
Website: Apple: Safari

Safari is a web browser developed by Apple Inc. and included in Mac OS X.
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Maintainer: Mozilla Corporation / Mozilla Foundation

OS: Cross-platform
Available language(s): Multilingual,[1] EULA in English only[2]
Use: Web browser
License: Mozilla EULA for binary redistribution

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Windows Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer abbreviated MSIE), commonly abbreviated to IE, is a series of proprietary graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems
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FeedDemon is a RSS Feed reader for Windows. It was created and developed by Nick Bradbury, author of tools HomeSite, an HTML editor and TopStyle, a CSS editor. FeedDemon is developed in Borland Delphi. FeedDemon was purchased by NewsGator Technologies in May 2005.
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NetNewsWire is a commercial desktop news aggregator for Mac OS X, featuring a three-paned interface similar to Apple's Mail client. It was developed by Brent and Sheila Simmons for their company Ranchero Software. NetNewsWire has a 30-day demo period.
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Web scraping generically describes any of various means to extract content from a website over HTTP for the purpose of transforming that content into another format suitable for use in another context.
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document (noun) is a bounded physical representation of body of information designed with the capacity (and usually intent) to communicate. A document may manifest symbolic, diagrammatic or sensory-representational information.
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Extensible Markup Language

File extension: .xml
MIME type: application/xml, text/xml (deprecated)
Uniform Type Identifier: public.xml
Developed by: World Wide Web Consortium
Type of format: Markup language
Extended from: SGML
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NeWS (for Network extensible Window System) was a windowing system developed by Sun Microsystems in the late 1980s. Its primary architect was James Gosling, who subsequently designed Java.
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weather is the set of all extant phenomena in a given atmosphere at a given time. The term usually refers to the activity of these phenomena over short periods (hours or days), as opposed to the term climate, which refers to the average atmospheric conditions over longer periods of
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search engine is an information retrieval system designed to help find information stored on a computer system. Search engines help to minimize the time required to find information and the amount of information which must be consulted, akin to other techniques for managing
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RSS

Screenshot of an RSS feed as seen in Mozilla Thunderbird
File extension: .rss, .xml
MIME type: application/rss+xml (Registration Being Prepared)[1]
Extended from: XML
..... Click the link for more information.
Atom

File extension: .atom, .xml
MIME type: application/atom+xml
Type of format: Syndication
Extended from: XML The name Atom applies to a pair of related standards.
..... Click the link for more information.
Web syndication is a form of syndication in which a section of a website is made available for other sites to use. This could be simply by licensing the content so that other people can use it; however, in general, web syndication
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RSS

Screenshot of an RSS feed as seen in Mozilla Thunderbird
File extension: .rss, .xml
MIME type: application/rss+xml (Registration Being Prepared)[1]
Extended from: XML
..... Click the link for more information.
In computing, a feed aggregator, also known as a feed reader or simply as an aggregator, is client software or a Web application which aggregates syndicated web content such as news headlines, blogs, podcasts, and vlogs in a single location for easy viewing.
..... Click the link for more information.
A web browser is a software application that enables a user to display and interact with text, images, videos, music and other information typically located on a Web page at a website on the World Wide Web or a local area network.
..... Click the link for more information.
Uniform Resource Locator (URL) formerly known as Universal Resource Locator, is a technical, Web-related term used in two distinct meanings:
  • In popular usage, many technical documents, it is a synonym for Uniform Resource Identifier (URI);

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machine-readable (or computer-readable) refers to information encoded in a form which can be read (i.e., scanned/sensed) by a machine/computer and interpreted by the machine's hardware and/or software.
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This article is copied from an article on Wikipedia.org - the free encyclopedia created and edited by online user community. The text was not checked or edited by anyone on our staff. Although the vast majority of the wikipedia encyclopedia articles provide accurate and timely information please do not assume the accuracy of any particular article. This article is distributed under the terms of GNU Free Documentation License.
Herod_Archelaus


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