Thunderbird support for Really Simple Syndication (RSS)

What Exactly Is RSS and Why Do You Want It?

It can be difficult to keep track of the enormous amount of information available on the web. Most sites which have regular content updates (such as blogs, event calendars, and news organizations), in addition to providing their content through a normal web interface, also provide updates through RSS, which stands for Really Simple Syndication. RSS provides a news feed to which you can subscribe, using a progam which supports RSS feeds (such as Thunderbird). Once you subscribe to a news feed, you will be automatically notified when the news source is updated. You can usually subscribe to a general news feed (for all content a site generates) or a specific one (articles related to a single topic); because RSS allows you to focus on the news which is of personal interest to you, it helps you keep better informed without having to check a bunch of different sites every day.

Thunderbird has a built-in RSS feed reader which lets you view RSS content in a way that is very similar to reading email: the RSS feeds that you subscribe to will be listed in your folders pane, the individual article titles will be displayed in the message list pane, and when you click on a title the article content will be displayed in the message preview pane.

A special section in the mailbox pane entitled Blogs & News keeps your RSS subscriptions neatly organized and easily accessable. The orange radar icons make it clear they are not just ordinary mailboxes! The following shows how to create an RSS account and subscribe to RSS feeds.

Creating an RSS News & Blogs account

Before you can subscribe to any RSS feeds (also called channels), you first need to create an RSS account. To do so:

1. Go to the File menu and select New, Account. Or go to the Tools menu and select Account Settings and click on the Add Account button.
2. In the dialog box that pops up, select RSS News & Blogs and press the Next button.
3. Enter an account name, press the Next button, and finally press the Finish button. This new account will now appear in the folders pane.

Subscribing to an RSS feed

You subscribe to a feed through the RSS Subscriptions dialog, which can be accessed in any of these ways:

• Right-click on the account name in the folders pane and select Manage Subscriptions.
  
• Click on the account name in the folders pane and then click on the Manage Subscriptions link in the main Thunderbird window.
  
• Go to Tools, Account Settings, click on the account name in the left-hand pane, and then click the Manage Subscriptions button.

Once you've brought up the RSS Subscriptions dialog, all you need to do to subscribe to an RSS feed is click the Add button, enter the URL for the feed into the box and click OK. The URL for a feed is usually published on the web site either with the orange "radar" icon next to it, or else the text "RSS" or "syndicated with ATOM" or something similar; you can right-click to copy the URL for the feed and paste it into Thunderbird's dialog box. After the feed is verified, it will then appear in the RSS Subscriptions dialog and in the folders pane under the account. You will be notified whenever any of the content on your subscribed sites is updated. By default, Thunderbird will check every 100 minutes.

A Few Local RSS Web Sites

• UC Berkeley's NewsCenter
• Tom Holub's L&S computing Director's Blog
• San Francisco Chronicle's RSS Feeds