Section 11.2. RSS: The Missing Manual
In the beginning, the Internet was an informational Garden of Eden. There were no banner ads, pop-ups, flashy animations, or spam messages. Back then, people thought the Internet was the greatest idea ever.
Those days, unfortunately , are long gone. Web browsing now entails a constant battle against intrusive advertising and annoying animations. And with the proliferation of Web sites of every kindfrom news sites to personal Web logs ( blogs )just reading your favorite sites can become a full-time job.
Enter RSS, a technology that lets you subscribe to feeds summary blurbs provided by thousands of sources around the world, from Reuters to Apple to your nerdy nextdoor neighbor. You use a program like Safari to "subscribe" to updates from such feeds, and then read any new articles or postings at your leisure.
The result: You spare yourself the tedium of checking for updates manually, plus you get to read short summaries of new articles without ads and blinking animations. And if you want to read a full article, you can click its link in the RSS feed to jump straight to the main Web site.
Note: RSS either stands for Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication. Each abbreviation explains one aspect of RSSeither its summarizing talent or its simplicity.
11.2.1. Viewing an RSS Feed
So how do you sign up for these free, automatic RSS "broadcasts?" Watch your Address bar as you're surfing the Web. When you see a blue RSS button appear (identified in Figure 11-6), Safari is telling you, "This site has an RSS feed available."
To see what all the fuss is about, click that button. Safari switches into RSS-viewing mode, as shown in Figure 11-6.
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At this point, you have two choices:
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Add the RSS feed as a bookmark . Use the Bookmarks
Add Bookmark command, and add the feed to your Bookmarks menu or Bookmarks bar as you would any Web page. From now on, youll be able to see whether the RSS feed has had any new articles postedwithout actually having to visit the site. Figure 11-6 has the details. -
Close the RSS feed altogether . To do so, just click the RSS button again. You're back where you started, at whatever Web page you were visiting.
11.2.2. RSS Tricks
RSS is a tremendously flexible and powerful technology, especially in Safari's able hands. The fun never ends, as these tricks illustrate .
11.2.2.1. Creating RSS summaries
If you create a new bookmark folder and fill it with RSS feeds, you can see the total number of new articles right next to the folder's name (Figure 11-7, bottom). You might create a folder of Mac news feeds, for instance, so you know whenever there's an important event in the Mac world.
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From then on, by clicking the folder's name (and opening its pop-up menus ), you can see which feeds have new articles; they're the ones with numbers next to their names. If you 
-click a bookmark folder's namein either the Bookmarks bar or the Bookmarks menuSafari shows you all of the feeds, neatly collated into one big, easily digestible list for your perusing pleasure . (If you're billing by the hour , you can also choose View All RSS Articles from the folder's pop-up menu to achieve the same effect.)
Tip: To make the merged list more useful, click New under the "Sort By" heading. Now Safari displays any new articles at the top of the list, regardless of what site they came from, so you don't have to hunt through the list for new articles yourself.
11.2.2.2. The personal clipping service
The search box at the right of any RSS-viewing window works pretty much as you'd expect: It narrows down the list of articles to only those that contain your search terms.
But that's barely scratching the surface of the search field's power. If you've adopted the feed-merging trick described above, the Search box can search several feeds at onceperfect, for example, if you want to see all the news from Mac sites that has to do with iTunes.
But get thisyou can then save the search itself as a bookmark. Use the Bookmark This Search link at the lower-right corner of the window. Give the bookmark a name, choose where it should appear in Safari, and click Add.
You've just turned Safari into a high-tech personal clipping service. With one click on your new bookmark, you can search all of your favorite news sources simultaneous-lythe feeds you've just selectedfor the terms you want. You've just saved yourself hours of daily searchingnot to mention the expense of a real clipping service.
11.2.2.3. The RSS screen saver
In System Preferences Desktop & Screen Saver, youll find the RSS Visualizer screen saver, one of the most impressive displays of Mac OS X technology you'll ever see. When you click Options and select an RSS feed (and enable screen savers, as described on Section 13.10.2), you set up Mac OS X to get news from that feed whenever you're away from your Mac. When the screen saver comes on, you're treated to a three-dimensional animation of the news from that sitealong with astonished gazes from your co-workers .
If the news story grabs your interest, press the number key mentioned at the bottom of the screen. The screen saver fades out, and Safari comes forward to display the associated article.
Tip: If the feed you want isn't part of System Preferences' repertoire , just add the feed to your Safari bookmarks and relaunch System Preferences.
11.2.2.4. Make feeds open automatically
As described on Section 11.1.4.8, you can easily set up any favorite Web site as your home page, the page that opens automatically whenever you start Safari or create a new window.
It turns out, though, that you can also make an RSS feedor a list of feedsyour home page. Open the feeds you want, choose Safari Preferences, click General, and click Set to Current Page.
If you started by opening a list of local, national, international, business, and sports news feeds, you've just made yourself a great imitation of a newspaper, but tailored to your interests. Plus, articles in this Safari-newspaper arrangement are timelier than anything you could read in printand they're completely free.
Tip: To find more RSS feeds, visit a site like www. feedster .com, or just watch for the appearance of the blue RSS button in the Address bar.By the way, Safari isn't the only RSS reader for Mac OS X. If you catch the RSS bug, you might want to try a program like NetNewsWire (http://ranchero.com/netnewswire/), which offers a more advanced layout and many more options.
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