What is an RSS feed?

An RSS feed provides means for a website to make its content available from an always up-to-date index at the press of a button. It is not necessary for you to be already viewing the website in question. Every time articles on the website are added or updated, the RSS feed is also updated automatically. You will be familiar with this concept if you already subscribe to online news feeds such as those provided by BBC News, CNN, The Daily Telegraph and countless others.

At present the HKGS website provides feeds of recent newlsletter articles, coming events and forum topic threads of the last six months.

How does an RSS feed work?

An RSS feed may be viewed either in a standalone reader or aggregator such as the free RSSOwl or in your Web browser. Firefox, for instance, has a Live Bookmarks facility that provides an easy way to subscribe to a feed and access the articles it provides. Other modern browsers provide similar facilities. Versions 6 and earlier of Internet Explorer, however, have no built-in capability to subscribe to or read RSS feeds. If you use one of these older browsers you will need to upgrade to an up-to-date one or use a standalone aggregator.

What does RSS stand for?

RSS is just a name. It is not an abbreviation, though various theories have been put forward to explain it. Computer nerds who invent these names love obscurity.

How do I know if a website provides an RSS feed?

Availability of an RSS feed is indicated by the inclusion of the RSS icon somewhere on the page.

How do I subscribe to an RSS feed?

There are several ways to subscribe to a feed, all of them quite straightforward. If in doubt, see the built-in help system of whichever browser or aggregator you use. In most cases, though, in addition to the RSS icon appearing within the page, your Web browser will also display it at the right side of the browser's address bar:

Click the icon to open a drop-down menu of available feeds and make a selection. A small panel will open where you can rename the feed if you wish and also change the default location for the feed's button to be placed in your browser as shown below:
When ready, press the Subscribe button.

Other ways to subscribe

As noted earlier, usually when a page provides an RSS feed the same icon will also be displayed within the page itself. If more than one feed is available, each will be shown with its own copy of the icon:
You can either click an icon to open the subscription box for its associated feed or, if you use a standalone aggregator, open it and simply drag the icon into it. with your mouse. You may be asked for futher information; again, see the aggregator's help system if necessary.

I have subscribed to a feed. Now how do I use it?

If using your browser's built-in RSS reader, the exact procedure will depend on the browser in question. In Firefox, for example, a Live Bookmark button will have been created for each feed. In the illustration below all the feeds have been placed in their own folder labelled RSS on the Bookmarks Toolbar. This location was specified using the Folder option in the subscribe panel shown above when the subscriptions were made.
Click a feed title in this menu to open a second drop-down menu of items available in it:
Select an article from this second menu and it will open in the main Firefox window. (If you are not already logged in you will be asked to do so.) If you wish to preserve a page that is already open, right-click the chosen article instead and select Open in a New Tab from the list that appears. Firefox will open the article in a new tabbed window, preserving the page you were previously veiwing. Just click the tabs at the top the pages to switch between them.

Other browsers work in much the same way, though the details vary.

Standalone aggregators work slightly differently from Web browsers and there are also some minor differences between aggregators in their behaviour but the basics are common to all. When you open the aggregator it will present a list of feeds to which you have subscribed. Select one and in most cases you will next see a page of article summaries. To read a full article in your Web browser just click its title. If the browser is not already open, it will do so automatically with the article already displayed.

Note: Firefox and Opera are available free of charge by following either of these links. Both are much more secure and safer than Internet Explorer and also comply with the Web standards, so unlike the latter they can be relied upon to display correctly properly designed modern websites, including HKGS, while at the same time enhancing your computer's protection against hackers. They are quick and easy to download and install and will allow you to import your existing bookmarks from Internet Explorer. You can still use IE for any badly-designed websites that will work only in that browser.