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Encyclopedia > Web feed
A typical web feed logo
A typical web feed logo

A web feed is a data format used for serving users frequently updated content. Content distributors syndicate a web feed, thereby allowing users to subscribe to it. Making a collection of web feeds accessible in one spot is known as aggregation, which is performed by an Internet aggregator. Image File history File links Feed-icon. ... Image File history File links Feed-icon. ... In computing, an aggregator, also known as a feed reader, is client software or a Web service which aggregates syndicated web content such as news headlines, blogs, podcasts, and vlogs in a single location for easy viewing. ...


In the typical scenario of using web feeds, a content provider publishes a feed link on their site which end users can register with an aggregator program (also called a feed reader or a news reader) running on their own machines; doing this is usually as simple as dragging the link from the web browser to the aggregator. When instructed, the aggregator asks all the servers in its feed list if they have new content; if so, the aggregator either makes a note of the new content or downloads it. Aggregators can be scheduled to check for new content periodically. The end user is a central concept in software engineering, referring to an abstraction of the group of persons who will ultimately use a piece of software (i. ... In computing, an aggregator, also known as a feed reader, is client software or a Web service which aggregates syndicated web content such as news headlines, blogs, podcasts, and vlogs in a single location for easy viewing. ... An example of a web browser (Internet Explorer), displaying the English Wikipedia main page. ...


The kinds of content delivered by a web feed are typically HTML (webpage content) or links to webpages and other kinds of digital media. Often when websites provide web feeds to notify users of content updates, they only include summaries in the web feed rather than the full content itself. HTML, short for Hypertext Markup Language, is the predominant markup language for the creation of web pages. ...


Web feeds are operated by many news websites, weblogs, schools, and podcasters. A website (alternatively, Web site or web site) is a collection of Web pages, images, videos and other digital assets that is hosted on one or several Web server(s), usually accessible via the Internet, cell phone or a LAN. A Web page is a document, typically written in HTML... A weblog (now more commonly known as a blog) is a web-based publication consisting primarily of periodic articles (normally, but not always, in reverse chronological order). ... An orange square with waves indicates that an RSS feed is present on a web page. ...

Contents

Benefits

Web feeds also have some advantages compared to receiving frequently published content via email:

  • When subscribing to a feed, users do not disclose their email address, so users are not increasing their exposure to threats associated with email: spam, viruses, phishing, and identity theft.
  • If users want to stop receiving news, they do not have to send an "unsubscribe" request; users can simply remove the feed from their aggregator.
  • The feed items are automatically "sorted" in the sense that each feed URL has its own sets of entries (unlike an email box, where all mails are in one big pile and email programs have to resort to complicated rules and pattern matching).

A "Feed Reader" is required for using Web Feeds. This tool works like an automated e-mail program, but no e-mail address is needed. The user subscribes to a particular web feed, and thereafter receives updated contents, every time updating takes place. Feed Readers may be online (like a webmail account) or offline. Recently a number of mobile readers have arrived to the market. An offline web feed is downloaded to the user's system. Feed readers are used in personalized home page services like My Google or My Yahoo or My MSN to put content such as news, weather and stock quotes appear on the user’s personal page. Content from other sites can also be added to that personalized page, again using feeds. Organizations can use a web feed server behind their firewall to distribute, manage and track the use of internal and external web feeds by users and groups. Other web-based tools are primarily dedicated to feed-reading only. One of the most popular web-based feed readers at this point is Bloglines, which is also free. Firefox, Internet Explorer 7.0, and many other web browsers allow receipts of feeds from the tool bar using Live Bookmarks, Favorites, and other techniques to integrate feed reading into a browser. Finally, there are desktop-based feed readers, e.g. Newsgator and Feed Demon. These are like email programs for web This phishing attempt, disguised as an official email from a (fictional) bank, attempts to trick the banks members into giving away their account information by confirming it at the phishers linked website. ... Mozilla Firefox is a graphical web browser developed by the Mozilla Corporation, and a large community of external contributors. ... Windows Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer, abbreviated MSIE), commonly abbreviated to IE, is a series of popular graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems starting in 1995. ...


Scraping

The usual way is that a web feed is made available by the same entity that created the content. Typically the feed comes from the same place as the website. However not all websites provide a feed. Sometimes third parties will read the website and create a feed for it by scraping it. Web scraping is defined as a web crawler that copies content from one or more existing websites in order to generate a scraper site. ...


Sometimes this is done by tools that are hand crafted for each particular website. There are also automatic tools such as IrisFeed, feedmaker, Feedity, Feed43, Feedyes, Page2RSS, WEB2RSS.


Scraping is controversial since it distributes the content in a manner that was not chosen by the content owner.


Technical definition

A web feed is a document (often XML-based) which contains content items with web links to longer versions. News websites and blogs are common sources for web feeds, but feeds are also used to deliver structured information ranging from weather data to "top ten" lists of hit tunes to search results. The two main web feed formats are RSS and Atom. For the similarly-named Surrealist journal, see Documents (journal). ... The Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a general-purpose markup language. ... For other uses, see News (disambiguation). ... Weather is a term that encompasses phenomena in the atmosphere of a planet. ... A top 10 list is a generic term used to indicate a list of items, usually ten in number, which are considered to be best, worst, or notable in some other way, typically a record chart. ... Google search is the worlds most popular search engine. ... For RSS feeds from Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Syndication. ... The name Atom applies to a pair of related standards. ...


"Publishing a feed" and "syndication" are two of the more common terms used to describe making available a feed for an information source, such as a blog. Like syndicated print newspaper features or broadcast programs, web feed contents may be shared and republished by other websites. (For that reason, one popular definition of RSS is Really Simple Syndication.) A typical web feed logo Web syndication is a form of syndication in which a section of a website is made available for other sites to use. ... Really Simple Syndication is a member group of the RSS family for web syndication. ...


More often, feeds are subscribed to directly by users with aggregators or feed readers, which combine the contents of multiple web feeds for display on a single screen or series of screens. Some modern web browsers incorporate aggregator features. Depending on the aggregator, users typically subscribe to a feed by manually entering the URL of a feed or clicking a link in a web browser. In computing, an aggregator, also known as a feed reader, is client software or a Web service which aggregates syndicated web content such as news headlines, blogs, podcasts, and vlogs in a single location for easy viewing. ... An example of a web browser (Internet Explorer), displaying the English Wikipedia main page. ... A Uniform Resource Locator, URL (spelled out as an acronym, not pronounced as earl), or Web address, is a standardized address name layout for resources (such as documents or images) on the Internet (or elsewhere). ...


Web feeds are designed to be machine-readable rather than human-readable, which tends to be a source of confusion when people first encounter web feeds. This means that web feeds can also be used to automatically transfer information from one website to another, without any human intervention. The term machine-readable or computer-readable refers to information encoded in a form which can be read or understood by a machine / computer and interpreted by hardware and / or software. ... Human-readable refers to a representation of information that can be naturally read by humans. ...


See also

The name Atom applies to a pair of related standards. ... For RSS feeds from Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Syndication. ... A typical web feed logo Web syndication is a form of syndication in which a section of a website is made available for other sites to use. ...

References and external links


  Results from FactBites:
 
Web feed - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (874 words)
The two main web feed formats are RSS and Atom.
More often, feeds are subscribed to directly by users with aggregators or feed readers, which combine the contents of multiple web feeds for display on a single screen or series of screens.
Web feeds are designed to be machine-readable rather than human-readable, which tends to be a source of confusion when people first encounter web feeds.
Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Web feeds | RSS (320 words)
By using our web feeds, you are deemed to have accepted the Guardian Unlimited terms and conditions of use.
Put the address of one of our web feeds into your reader, and it will display the latest headlines, each one with a synopsis and link that will take you to the full story.
Setting up a feed differs from one aggregator to another, but it usually involves copying the URL of the feed (from the address bar on your browser) and pasting it into the reader.
  More results at FactBites »


 

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