About News Feeds

What are News Feeds?

News feeds give you the latest news headlines as soon as they are published, without requiring you to visit the web site they came from.

News Feeds are sometimes called "RSS feeds" or simply "RSS".

How do I use News Feeds?

Generally you will need a so-called news reader.  This is a program on your computer that automatically checks your News Feeds and displays them for reading.  There are many different news readers available - some come built in with your web browser, others will be separate programs that you download and install.  Some popular news readers are listed at the bottom of this page.

To use a News Feed you must subscribe to it - much as you would add a web site to your favourites.  Some browsers check for News Feeds automatically when you visit a website and display an icon that allow you to use it very easily.  Otherwise you can subscribe manually, usually in 1 of 2 ways:

1. Click and drag the orange news button into your news reader; or
2. Copy the address of the News Feed and paste it into a new feed in your news reader.

News Readers

Web browsers that provide built-in support for News Feeds include Firefox and Safari.

Popular news reader programs include News Crawler (Windows), FeedDemon (Windows), Newsfire (Mac OS X) and NetNewsWire (Max OS X).