RSS feed – What is it?

You may have noticed a new logo appearing on our web site since the redesigned interface went online.

If your web browser supports it (Opera 9, FireFox, Internet Explorer 7), a similar orange icon may appear on the web address bar.

This is a feature that is good both for users and for web site designers. For the users, it provides a simple way to access to the information on our web site by allowing FireFox or Opera to directly collect the news from the web site without even opening the page. If you click on one of these RSS feed icons , your web browser should propose to subscribe to the feed. After that, you will be informed more directly about news on Roumazeilles.net even if you do not open the web site. You will never miss interesting headlines!

The RSS feed icon is a standardized way (proposed by FireFox) to easily point you to this fast access to the web site information. By itself, this is good news for the web designer because it gives a common recognition standard: I don’t have to explain (like I do here) the meaning of the icon, I don’t have to invent some explanation or title. It looks the same on all web sites supporting this feature.

Initially, it RSS feeds were created to syndicate content (to allow other sites to seamlessly include the content of Roumazeilles.net in their own pages). This is still possible (this is what is used by news management web sites like MyYahoo!, MyAOL, Google, or Bloglines), but it has been greatly extended by the creation of specific tools integrated in your own browser.