RSS feeds
RSS feeds (sometimes called "Web feeds") are a way of presenting
changing content in a format that can be understood by a computer program.
A typical example would be a news site that publishes new stories regularly.
Here are some of the ways you could use that site's RSS feed:
- Live bookmarks
- If your browser understands feeds (the latest versions all do) then
you will see a little feed icon
in the address bar. Clicking on it creates a link that points to the summary
(Firefox calls them "Live Bookmarks"). Your browser regularly
checks to see if a new item has been published, and warns you in some
way if it has. You don't need to keep on visiting a page to see if anything
new has appeared on it.
- Browser plug-ins
- For some browsers, plug-ins are available that can do extra things for
you, such as display a summary list of recent blog items in a sidebar. Sage Reader for
Firefox is an excellent example.
- Feed readers
- You can also install self-sufficient feed readers that are independent
of your browser. These are much less common than they were, but they don't
depend on the browser understanding feeds, so you can carry on using an
older browser if you want.
- Syndicating the content
- "Syndication" means incorporating the items from a feed into
a web page of your own, so that your web page changes whenever a new item
is published. For example, if you have an account on iGoogle or My Yahoo!,
you can customise your home page to incorporate RSS feeds. Wordpress has
similar tools. If you have your own web site then tools are available
for incorporating external feeds into it.
Available Universalis feeds
- Mass Readings (today)
- Readings for today. Because "Today" means different things
in different parts of the world (for instance, Thursday evening in America
is Friday morning in Europe) you may need to check that Universalis knows
which time zone you are in before you try using this link.
- Mass Readings (3 days)
- Readings for yesterday, today and tomorrow. This wider range means that
you don't have to worry about time zones.
- Weekly summary
- The feast of the day, plus links to the Hours and Mass readings, for
a week ahead.
- 3-day summary
- The same, but for yesterday, today and tomorrow only.
All these feeds are in Atom 1.0 format, which all modern feed readers
can understand.
Using these feeds
EITHER Go to the Mass page or the About
Today page. In your browser's address bar you will see a feed icon
next to the page address. Click on it, and your browser will give you some
options for which feed to use and how to use it. Other tools such as feed readers and syndication sites may also be able
to "auto-discover" the Universalis feeds if you give them the
page address to look at.
OR you can get the address of the feed you want like this:
- Right-click on one of the following links: Mass Readings (today) · Mass Readings (3 days) · 3-day summary · Weekly summary
- In the menu that pops up, ask your browser to copy the link or shortcut.
- Go to the program that is asking for
the feed address, and paste the address into it.