RSS
Introduction
RSS (
RDF
Site
Summary) is a simple format allowing websites to publish a list of links with titles and descriptions that other sites or third-party clients can access and use. Using RSS, newspapers spread links,
web loggers announce their posts, and everyone keeps up with what's new. Think of it as a distributable "What's New" for your site. It is also known as
Rich
Site
Summary, thought it doesn't look like an official name.
Originally created by Netscape to fill channels for Netcenter, RSS (RDF based) has evolved into a popular means of sharing content between sites, especially news sites,
wikis and
blogs. Remember the
active channels in the days of IE 4.0? RSS is actually a XML vocabulary similar to IE's CDF (Channel Definition Format) which made up the active channels.
The last version of RSS developed by Netscape is version 0.9. Since then, Netscape faked out and UserLand took up the work. However, unlike Netscape's RSS, UserLand's RSS is not RDF based. Also, the name RSS was rebranded as
Really
Simple
Syndication. RSS 0.91, 0.92, and 0.94 were then released. On another hand, RSS 0.9 was continuely developed by an informal working group. This resulted in RSS 1.0. RSS 1.0 is very widely used as it is based on RDF, the W3C-recommended technology.
However, UserLand didn't recognize this and continued to develop the original RSS, which resulted in RSS 2.0. Since then, we have 2 streams of RSS: the original UserLand's RSS and W3C's RSS.
Perhaps this chaos is the reason why (yet) another kind of XML feed was developed:
Atom.
RSS