IE7 and Longhorn to Get RSS Support

The next versions of Internet Explorer (IE) and Windows (code-named Longhorn) will support RSS, an XML format for syndicating news and other Web content such as Web logs (“blogs”), enabling users to subscribe to a site and be notified when new content has been posted. But details remain sketchy on which of the proposed features are part of Longhorn and which are part of IE 7.0, and will therefore be available on Windows XP SP2 as well. Furthermore, multiple incompatible versions of RSS are available, and its future is clouded by infighting between the major players.

RSS: Not Just for Blogs

RSS is not a single standard or format—RSS developers can’t even agree on what the letters “RSS” stand for. Rather, it is an umbrella term for a set of XML formats for syndicating news and other newslike Web sites. A site that uses RSS publishes on its site an XML file that summarizes its contents (often referred to as an “RSS feed.”) When new content is posted to the Web site, the feed is also updated, usually with the assistance of an application built for that purpose. A user subscribes to the feed using an RSS-aware client application (often called an “aggregator,” because it aggregates feeds from all of the user’s subscribed sites.) The aggregator will periodically download a new version of the RSS file and notify the user of any new content that has been published.