Setting up RSS

Nobody really knows what RSS stands for but it is broadly understood to mean Really Simple Syndication. RSS allows a website to publish a feed of information that can be fed to you via an e-mail client, such as Outlook, or a web browser, so that you will receive updates without visiting the site itself. A brief forage around the web shows many sites that have the little orange wave ripple symbol indicating an RSS fed is available. If you’ve already bookmarked the source of the RSS page—for example, if you’ve bookmarked the Flying Kukris' website - you’ll need a separate bookmark for the RSS FK NEWS view.

For example on the BBC News site at the bottom right corner of this graphic:

Clicking on the orange wave icon will take you to a page of news feeds. I picked this example as the BBC also offer a neat explanation from this page about RSS.

But we don’t really want to view the page this way, we want to subscribe to this feed. You can subscribe to this RSS feed in a number of ways, including the following:

• Drag the orange RSS button into your News Reader
• Drag the URL of the RSS feed into your News Reader
• Cut and paste the URL of the RSS feed into your News Reader

But what’s a News Reader? Your News Reader is pretty much whatever you use to collect your e-mails or browse the web. The one significant exception is Google Chrome which cannot handle RSS itself but contains a Reader in Gmail which does the job nicely.

After the brief overview let’s move to the specifics of the Flying Kukris RSS feed for sits at the bottom right of the What’s New section of www.flyingkukris.com:

Depending on what browser you are using, you will get different reactions if you click on that RSS FK NEWS button which I don’t intend to itemise. We’ll move right along to using it. Appreciate that there are at least 3 mainstream Operating Systems out there, browsers such as IE8, Opera, Firefox, Safari and various e-mail clients such as Outlook, Gmail and Hotmail. As you well know, with computers, there are usually numerous ways to achieve the same goal; there may be other ways to do the following!

Starting with Firefox 3.5

If you run Firefox, you probably already have a Latest Feeds RSS button below your navigation bar. Browse to www.flyingkukris.com. Click on the RSS FK NEWS button. The screen will move away from the Home page to the RSS page with the current feeds listed below. The dialog box at the top of the screen gives you the option to Subscribe:

Then you will get a dialog option box for where you want the feed to appear:

And finally the feed button looks like this:

But the button function slightly differently from other browsers in that it calls the web page directly rather than giving you a summary.

Gmail

Once the browser is open in Gmail, you will see 8 options in the top left corner. Select Reader. In the top left corner you will now see this:

First copy the link/address/URL below. This link is the embedded URL under RSS FK NEWS; you could get it from there if you wish.

http://www.flyingkukris.com/index.php/en/component/bca-rss-syndicator/?feed_id=1

Then select Add a subscription. A small address window will open immediately below Add a subscription, paste the address into the window. Click Add. The window pane will now display all the What’s New feeds from FK. Your subscriptions are listed further down the left pane.

Hotmail

I don't think you can but feel free to prove me wrong!

Internet Explorer 8

Browse to www.flyingkukris.com. Click on the RSS FK NEWS button. The screen will move away from the Home page to the RSS page with the current feeds listed below. There is a beige box at the top which offers you the option to Subscribe to this feed. Clicking on the link will open a dialog box:

I recommend that you check the Add to Favorites Bar. What you will now see in your browser Favorites Bar looks like this:

The FK N... (I’ve got too many items on my Favorites Bar to show them all clearly) will then pulldown to look like this:

So if the background is not FK News as it currently is, you can always see any feeds from the Favorites Bar which will be bold for new info.

Opera

Browse to www.flyingkukris.com. Click on the RSS FK NEWS button. The screen will move away from the Home page to the RSS page with the current feeds listed below. Opera has a somewhat cleaner interface and big Subscribe button on the red ribbon cross the top. Once subscribed, the Feeds item in the menu across the top will allow you to access any news:

Again you can see bold indicating new info.

Outlook 2007

Open Outlook. In the Mail Folders in the Mail section, you will have listed your various mail folders, most obviously the Inbox and Sent box. Also there will be the RSS feeds box which may well contain a couple of feeds from Microsoft already.

Right click on the RSS feeds and select Add a New RSS Feed....

Copy the address from earlier on this page, paste it into the new dialog box. Select Add:

The FK News RSS feed will now appear in a similar manner to a normal e-mail.

Safari

Go to www.flyingkukris.com and click the RSS FK NEWS icon at the bottom right of What's New.

(If there were more than one RSS view for a webpage, clicking the RSS icon produces a list of available RSS pages. Choose the one you want.)

Click the Add (+) button.

Type a name for the bookmark; for example, “FK NEWS.”

Specify where you want to keep the bookmark. You can add it to the bookmarks bar, the Bookmarks menu, or to another collection if you have created one.

Click Add.

When you click the bookmark, Safari displays the latest articles.