Setting Up and Using an RSS Feed Reader

 

 

Why do I need an RSS Feed Reader?

Let's say you have several websites you like to read occasionally, maybe a few blogs, a news site, some forums you participate in. Most people bookmark those sites and use their Favorites folder to visit them periodically to check for updates. Sometimes you may miss something that was posted a while ago, or you may check and find that there is nothing new, wasting some of your time. What a feed reader does is check the sites for you automatically and download any new information from the sites you've added to your reader.

Because I hadn't checked the forum shown in the image to the right for a while, the "new" messages shown here are about a month old now.

 

 

 

In this image I've installed free feed reader software and added that forum to the feed list. As a result the software has downloaded all the latest posts from that forum automatically.

 

 

 

How do I get one of these things?

 

 

If you are beginning to see that this type of software could be useful, the good news is that many RSS readers are free and easy to install and use. I'll give you instructions on how to set up one called Snarfer. First head to the Snarfware website and download the free Snarfer program.

 

 

 

 

Click "Save" and save the installation file somewhere on your computer where you can locate it. Your file may have a different name than the one shown in this image, as the file name will change with program updates.

 

 

Installation and Setup of Snarfer Feed Reader

If you still see your download window, you should be able to double-click the file name to start the installation file. If you don't see a window similar to the one on the right, locate the folder where you downloaded the file and double-click the file name there. If you see a security warning message, go ahead and click "Run".

 

 

 

When you see the window that asks you which feeds you want to import, I recommend unchecking all those. Snarfer comes with some pre-defined sites and those are the ones it's trying to add here. You can add your own easily in a minute. The "Unselect All" button didn't unselect all for me. I had to click on each box to uncheck them. Then click "Next."

Next it will ask you to select the folder where you want the feeds to be imported. Since I didn't import any, I just clicked "Cancel" there. If you don't want to import, you can just click "Cancel" in the window to the right and skip that second step.

 

 

 

 

 

Next you'll want to set up a folder that will contain your site feeds. If you anticipate having a lot of feeds, you may want to set up several different folders, like blogs, forums, and news so you can keep them organized. I'm just going to set up one folder and store all my feeds in it.

Right-click the item in the left column that says "Message Folders" and select New/Folder. Name the folder and you should see it appear in the list of folders on the left. I was very original and named mine "Vicki's Sites."

 

 

Adding Feeds - you can add any site to Snarfer that produces an RSS feed. When you view a site in your browser, look for an RSS symbol, usually orange and something like arrow 1 is pointing to in this screenshot. If I want to add a feed for the Reverend Fun site, I just highlight and copy that web address, then right-click on the new folder you just created and select New/Feed, paste the website address into the Feed Address field and click Next.

When you're asked how you want to handle the messages from the feed, just keep it at the default value of keeping a fixed number, no more than 200. You can always delete messages later.

 

 

 

 

Is that cool or what? If you did everything correctly, you should see results similar to the screenshot above. Highlight any of the items in the list to view a preview of it in the lower window. If you click the link that says "View Original Article" it will load the full page in that window. Just click the home icon that will appear to return to the original display.

That's all there is to it. You can add the rest of your favorite sites with RSS feeds the exact same way. If you ever want to remove a feed, just right-click the feed in the left column and select Delete.