RSS

News feeds allow you to see when websites have added new content. You can get the latest headlines in one place, as soon as its published, without having to visit the websites you have taken the feed from.

Feeds are also known as RSS. There is some discussion as to what RSS stands for, but most people plump for ‘Really Simple Syndication’. In essence, the feeds themselves are just web pages, designed to be read by computers rather than people.

The AS-Interface Expert Alliance offers RSS feeds to quickly circulate the ‘news’ and ‘events’ releases which appear on this site.  Subscribers may be regular users of AS-i, the trade press, or any visitor who wants to be kept up to date with our organisation.  You do not have to be a registered user of this site to access our RSS feed.

How do I start using feeds?

In general, the first thing you need is something called a news reader. This is a piece of software that checks the feeds and lets you read any new articles that have been added. There are many different versions, some of which are accessed using a browser, and some of which are downloadable applications.

Browser-based news readers let you catch up with your RSS feed subscriptions from any computer, whereas downloadable applications let you store them on your main computer, in the same way that you either download your e-mail using Outlook, or keep it on a web-based service like Hotmail.

Once you have chosen a news reader, all you have to do is to decide what content you want it to receive. For example, if you would like the latest AS-Interface news stories, simply visit our home page and you will notice the RSS button on the top right above latest news.

If you click on the RSS button you can subscribe to the feed in various ways, including by dragging the URL of the feed into your news reader or by cutting and pasting the same URL into a new feed in your news reader. Most sites that offer feeds use a similar orange button, but some may just have a normal web link.

Some browsers, including Firefox, Opera and Safari, automatically check for feeds for you when you visit a website, and display an icon when they find one. This can make subscribing to feeds much easier. For more details on these, please check their websites.

How do I get a news reader?

There is a range of different news readers available and new versions are appearing all the time.  A list of current readers can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_feed_aggregators

Benefits for AS-Interface Expert Alliance

Members of the Alliance can benefit from appropriate news stories posted on our homepage.  All subscribers to the RSS feeds will automatically be notified as soon as a news story is posted.  The number of visits shown on the news story itself will exclude the RSS data which will be far in excess when considering the number of monthly visitors to this site.

Benefits to visitors to the AS-Interface UK website

By using the RSS feed you will be automatically notified of new products, events etc without having to visit the site.