RSS is a family of XML file formats for web syndication used by (amongst other things) news websites and weblogs.
The technology behind RSS allows internet users to subscribe to websites that have provided RSS feeds; these are typically sites that change or add content regularly. To use this technology, users may download an aggregation service, which presents new articles in a list, giving a line or two of each article and a link to the full article or post, or us an RSS-enabled Web browser. Unlike subscriptions to pulp-based newspapers and magazines, RSS subscriptions are free.
The RSS formats provide web content or summaries of web content together with links to the full versions of the content, and other meta-data. This information is delivered as an XML file called RSS feed, webfeed, RSS stream, or RSS channel. In addition to facilitating syndication, RSS allows a website’s frequent readers to track updates on the site using a news aggregator.
RSS is widely used by the weblog community to share the latest entries’ headlines or their full text, and even attached multimedia files, such as for podcasting.
A program known as a feed reader or aggregator can check RSS-enabled webpages on behalf of a user and display any updated articles that it finds. It is now common to find RSS feeds on major web sites, as well as many smaller ones.
Client-side readers and aggregators are typically constructed as standalone programs or extensions to existing programs like web browsers. Such programs are available for various operating systems. Web-based feed readers and news aggregators require no software installation and make the user’s “feeds” available on any computer with Web access.
Popular Web browsers enabled to read RSS feeds include Firefox (Mac and Windows), Opera (Mac and Windows) and Safari (Mac).