“Apple has turned Safari, the Mac OS X Web browser, into an RSS [“Rich Site Summary” or “Really Simple Syndication”] reader. Combining RSS with the browser makes overwhelming sense, because you don’t have to flip back and forth between the headlines in one program and the full articles in your Web browser,” David Pogue writes for The New York Times. “(Firefox, an outstanding free browser for Windows, Macintosh and Linux, integrates RSS feeds in a very similar way, although without as much flexibility as what you’re about to read.)”
Pogue writes, “Here’s how life with Safari works. Any time you see an RSS logo appear in the address bar, Safari is telling you that you’ve stumbled onto a Web page that offers an RSS feed. (That’s handy, because it’s not always easy to tell if a page does or not.) Of course, you can also seek out RSS sites using Web sites like Feedster.com and Technorati.com.”
“If you click the RSS button, you enter Safari’s RSS-reading view: a scrolling “front page” containing all of the tidbits (articles, blog entries) from that Web page. A clever Article Length slider expands or shrinks all entries simultaneously, from full-length articles, with photos, to headlines only. Searching and sorting controls await at the right side,” Pogue writes. “Now here’s where it gets interesting. Exactly as in Firefox, you can bookmark this RSS feed. From now on, your Bookmarks menu (or Bookmarks bar) lets you know how many new articles have been published on the Web site you subscribed to–you’ll see, for example, “NYtimes.com (7)”–so you don’t waste time visiting pages where there’s nothing new.”
Pogue goes on to explain even more cool things you can easily do with Safari’s RSS features in his full article here.
MacDailyNews Note: Our RSS Feed time stamps have been fixed. For Safari 2.0 users, look for the blue RSS button in your address bar when visiting our site. For other browser users, our RSS feed is: http://www.macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/rss_2.0
[UPDATE, 5:12pm ET: We are working on the RSS link issue, so that one click of the RSS link will take your directly to the full article with Reader Feedback. We’ve been tinkering with how our RSS is generated in order to fix the time stamps and this is a new version. We’ll get it fixed ASAP. Thank you for your patience.]
[UPDATE, 5:35pm ET: The link issue in our RSS feed has been fixed. Times stamps from this point on should also be accurate and match the site’s time stamps. Thank you.]