RSS generally stands for "Really Simple Syndication." It is a mechanism that delivers the latest content from a web site directly to you rather than you having to check the website every day for what's new. RSS delivers a headline, a short summary and a link to the full text on the website, making it easy to keep up-to-date on your favorite websites.
RSS is still relatively new and not all websites provide RSS. Many major news websites such as CNN use RSS as a way to deliver the latest news. Other websites such as Amazon use RSS to announce their bestsellers. In fact, RSS can be used to deliver a great variety of content and content types. On the Cassini website we use RSS to deliver the latest information about images, videos and news coming from the Cassini spacecraft.
You will need a news reader. Some news readers are integrated with a web browser. Examples of these are Firefox, Opera and Safari. Other new readers are downloadable software that you install. Examples of these are Newz Crawler and FeedDemon. There are also news readers that are free of charge, for example Awasu. RSS feeds can also be added to web based services such as Hotmail and My Yahoo.
Once you have selected a news reader, look for an orange
or
logo. If you click on the logo, you should see the raw code for the RSS feed in your browser. To properly view the RSS feed, copy and paste the address (also called the URL) of the RSS feed from your browser's address bar into your news reader. Alternatively, the following instructions will also capture the URL of the RSS feed:
Windows
- IE: right-click the orange RSS button and select "copy shortcut"
- Firefox/Netscape/Mozilla: right-click on the orange RSS button and select "copy link location"
Macintosh
- IE: click and hold or control-click the orange RSS button and select "copy link location"
- Firefox/Netscape/Mozilla: click and hold or command-click the orange RSS button and select "copy link location"
- Safari: control-click the orange RSS button and select "copy link to clipboard"
Browsers with an integrated news reader such as Firefox, Opera and Safari, display a logo (
for Firefox and Opera; 
for Safari) in either the address bar or the lower right corner of the browser. Clicking on the logo in the address bar will generally add the RSS feed to the browser's bookmarks. Please see the browser's help pages for additional information.
