62. Browse and Organize RSS Feeds  BEFORE YOU BEGIN 61 Keep Track of Websites with Bookmarks
 SEE ALSO 63 Access Your Bookmarks Using .Mac 100 Synchronize Your Information Using .Mac
New in Mac OS X Tiger is a feature called Safari RSS ; built in to Safari is the ability to subscribe to RSS feeds , which are simplified summaries of articles on web pages such as news sites and web logs ( blogs ). When viewing an RSS feed, instead of seeing a complete website with all its embedded graphics and ads, all you see are the headlines and the first few dozen words of each article, in a long and unadorned list. A link at the end of each article excerpt leads to the full article in its original form that you can view normally in the browser, if it interests you enough for you to click the link. RSS feeds help you more efficiently keep track of frequently updated news pages, personal blogs, and specialized websites such as iTunes 25 New Releases , a selection of new songs at the iTunes Music Store that is updated every week. Safari RSS comes preloaded with a large number of useful RSS feeds for you to use. Safari RSS allows you to sort articles on an RSS-enabled page by date, title, or the name of the items' sources; you can also use the handy links in the sidebar to see only the items posted within well-defined time frames such as Today and This Month . A slider control allows you to select the length of the article summaries that appear on the page, from large excerpts all the way down to bare headlines. A search bar even allows you to perform topic-based instant searches in the current page, or you can load several RSS feeds at once and perform the same filtering search on all the articles on all the RSS pages you're viewing at once, creating a "personal clipping service" on a certain subject. Perhaps most importantly of all, Safari RSS keeps track of which items on a given RSS-enabled page you've already seen, and which ones are new; the number of new items shows up next to the RSS feed's name in the bookmarks, so you know when there are new items to read on your favorite frequently updated sites. Using these features, you can get the up-to-date gist of all the items appearing on your favorite news sites, with a fraction of the time and effort needed to go to the sites and read them in place. 62. Browse and Organize RSS Feeds 
 NOTE The number of unread articles in all your RSS feeds organized inside the RSS Feeds bookmark folder in your Bookmarks bar appears in parentheses after RSS Feeds in the bar.
Several preferences that you can set in Safari allow you to customize your RSS viewing experience to suit your needs. You can adjust how frequently Safari checks for new articles on your RSS feeds, and which feeds to check; you can have new articles tinted with a color of your choice; and you can indicate that Safari should not display old RSS articles, and choose how far back in time the cutoff should be. KEY TERMS Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feed A simplified formatting of a news site or web log, in which all the articles on the site appear as headlines followed by the first few dozen words of each article. Blog A shortening of "web log"; a serial news site or journal, usually maintained by one or more individuals and often dedicated to a certain special interest, in which the author posts new entries on an ongoing basis.
| 1. | Surf to a Website
Launch Safari and enter the URL (website address) of a desired website in the Address bar (the text box) at the top of the screen; then press Return to go directly to that site. You may also reach the desired site from your own bookmarks, or by following links on other sites on the Web.
| | 2. | Locate the RSS Feed URL Many news sites and blogs feature an RSS feed, although not all do. Such sites that do have RSS feeds will display a link or button somewhere on the page, indicating RSS , RDF, XML, Syndicate , or some similar labelall of them are forms of RSS feeds that Safari can display. Click the link or label graphic to load the RSS feed in Safari. TIP An alternative way to have your Mac track a favorite RSS feed is using the RSS Visualizer screen saver. This feature rushes headlines and article summaries across your screen in a rotating 3D environment that's so cool that you might find your co-workers gathered around your computer staring at it when you get back from lunch . | | 3. | Adjust Viewing Preferences An RSS feed displayed in Safari always has a standardized format: a blue bar at the top indicating the feed's title, how many items are in the feed, and how many of those are new. In the main pane at left is the article listing; at right is a navigation column with several links and controls that let you customize the feed's behavior. Use the Article Length slider to select how long each article summary should be; move it all the way to the right to see long excerpts of articles, or move it all the way to the left to see the headlines only. Several more behaviors of Safari RSS can be controlled from the Safari Preferences . Choose Preferences from the Safari menu; click the RSS icon to open the RSS pane. Here you can select an alternate RSS reader (if you have a better RSS application than Safari). You can also choose the behavior of Safari in looking for new articles: Select the check boxes for Bookmarks Bar and for Bookmarks Menu according to your preferences. Selecting one of these check boxes for a specific collection in your bookmarks means that Safari will automatically check for and display the count of new articles for RSS feeds that are inside that collection. For example, only if you organize an RSS feed into your Bookmarks Menu collection will Safari update its count of new articles for that feed, if you've selected the Bookmarks Menu check box. TIP Use the Check for updates drop-down list to choose how frequently Safari should look for new articles. Be aware that each time Safari checks these sites can involve significant sudden network traffic and disk activity, so don't set the interval too short if you have a slow connection or a slow computer! Select the Color new articles check box and select a color to turn the headlines of new articles that color, to help you see which ones are new. Finally, the Remove articles drop-down list lets you specify a maximum "age" for articles displayed in Safari; if you set it to After two weeks , articles older than two weeks will be deleted from Safari's local cache. Click Remove Now to immediately delete all expired articles; alternatively, wait until Safari automatically checks for new articles, at which time it also removes old ones. TIP If you accidentally remove the articles in an RSS feed that you wanted to keep, delete the RSS feed from your bookmarks and then add it againthis resets the feed to default conditions and restores all its articles as "new." | | 4. | Add the RSS Feed Bookmark
RSS feeds can be organized just like any other bookmarks. While viewing an RSS feed, simply click the + button and choose an appropriate bookmark title and a convenient location anywhere in your bookmark hierarchy, as described in 61 Keep Track of Websites with Bookmarks .
You can open a group of RSS feeds all at the same time. To do this, group the feeds into a bookmark folder, and put that folder into the Bookmarks Bar or Bookmarks Menu collection. Now, when you open that folder from the Bookmarks bar or the Bookmarks menu, you can choose the View All RSS Articles menu option, and all the feeds in that folder are opened simultaneously , with all their aggregate articles appearing in the same list. This works for nested folders as well as parent folders; if you open all the feeds in a parent folder, all feeds in nested folders will also open. Be careful not to overwhelm your computer with too many feeds at once!
| | 5. | Search Your RSS Feeds for a Topic
With one or several feeds open in your browser window, enter search text into the Search Articles input field. All the articles in the loaded RSS feeds are filtered to match your search text. This way, you can create what Apple calls a "personal clipping service," gathering all the articles on a given topic from across all the RSS feeds in your bookmark collection for maximum browsing convenience.
Click the X in the Search Articles field to clear the search text and restore all your feeds' loaded articles.
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