Zandbank Draken

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a (file) format especially designed for online news, like ticker items or forum posts of any kind.

An RSS reader is a program which can automatically fetch the so-called "RSS feeds" from any website offering them. The news are then displayed and optionally stored in the program and can be read and searched - even offline. An RSS reader is usually a separate program or it comes with your browser as either built-in functionality or as plug-in.

The biggest advantage of using an RSS reader for reading online news is that it is very easy and fast to read news from several different websites at once. There is no need anymore to browse each website or forum separately - all news can be fetched with one single click of your mouse.

The image above shows the RSS reader Akregator in action, displaying the news in our forum. Other and even more common RSS readers are Firefox and Thunderbird, which are available for most platforms.