Know Your Firefox, Part I: RSS Feeds

Well, first of all, it's terribly hot here. I mean, it's 7 in the evening, still the temperature's stuck at a terrible 40 C.



Well, anyway, coming more to the topic, which is regarding Firefox. You know, there are so many kinds of people, who use different browsers, for one thing. There are those who are fine with Internet Explorer coz they simply don't know that there are any better alternatives. Then there are those who know it, but don't wanna download the browser. Then of course, there are some who, for some reason known only to themselves, don't seem to really like these alternatives and actually switch back to IE! And finally, there are the real smart ones who go ahead and don't use IE, instead using Firefox.
Well, anyway, what I was saying is that even though so many people use Firefox, they don't really know all the functions that make it really stand out. So I'll explain a really simple, cool and useful one, namely RSS/Atom Feeds, or as firefox calls them, Live Bookmarks.

What is RSS?
First of all, we might start off with knowing what RSS really is. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. Simply putting it, many sites, such as blogs, journals, other websites, news sites etc. contain RSS feeds. These are...well, files, containing some information. For example, a feed of a blog (such as this one) may contain the titles and a small summary of all the posts, say, on the main page. So the useful thing is that you can simply check the feed and come to know if there are any new posts by checking the feed and not needing to go on the site itself. (For example, today I came to know that there was a new post on Karky's blog just by checking the feed - I didn't have to go on the blog everyday simply for the purpose of checking for new posts).........erm, so I hope you got my point.

Using RSS/Atom Feeds in Firefox
Firefox has built-in RSS integration, which means that you don't need another program to check your RSS feeds. Firefox calls these Live Bookmarks.
When you inastall Firefox, you'll see a live bookmark called 'Latest Headlines'. Yup, that's an RSS feed.
Okay, so to show you how to use them fields, I'll use the example of this blog. Look at the screenshot below: (colors, etc may vary due to Visual Style used and the ffox theme)(click to enlarge)



At the top is the title bar, then the menu bar, then the navigation toolbar, then the bookmarks toolbar, followed by the tabs.
On top, on the navigation bar, look at the location bar. You'll see the RSS button.




Click on it to get this:




Simply click on the OK button, and, actually your'e done. You'll see a button on the bookmarks toolbar for the RSS feed. Otherwise, you can click on the down arrow above the 'Cancel' button to change the folder. You can also change the title of the RSS feed. You can also change all this from the bookmarks manager (Bookmarks > Manage Bookmarks...)

To see your RSS feed, click on it:




You're done!!

-- Sahil