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In this tutorial we will learn how to read RSS feed using a state of the art open source Free RSS news aggrigator called Feedreader. It has an intuitive, use friendly environment .Feedreader offers advanced, cutting-edge capabilities, including the most comprehensive podcasting support available today, as well as unique smartfeed technology that puts the information you need right at your fingertips.

What is RSS?

RSS, stand for “Really Simple Syndication”. It is an easy way to distribute headlines, updates and contents. RSS feed is than used by the computer programs like Feedreader to display these headlines and content for easy reading. Sites like blogs and forums contents change at a rapid pace. Repeatedly checking each website for changes is quite a demanding and time consuming task. Using Feedreader you can handle notification from multiple websites easily. If you want to know more about the RSS, just google it. Here we go !!!

Navigate to website http://www.feedreader.com/ and download Feedreader. Unzip the file and copy the contents in a folder, “Feedreader” on your harddrive. Run Feedreader.exe. Press Alt+1 key to switch to classic layout or choose View > View Layout > Classic from the main menu.

Other two layout options are Wide and Full. You can also toggle layouts by clicking on the layout switches located at the right bottom corner of the UI.

Before we go ahead I want you to copy the text “http://feeds.feedburner.com/cgsutra“, without the quotes and go to File > New Feed or press F3. You can see that Feedreader has automatically captured the text you copied. Press OK to accept the changes. Feedreader will go ahead and fetch all the latest headlines and contents from the CGSutra blog. Now you can click on headlines one by one and read the content. How easy it is?

If you are impressed with the content, right click on the title in the content area and chose Open in New Window and put a comment there.

Likewise, add CGSutra Forums Feed, http://feeds.feedburner.com/cgsutraforums.

Now try adding below mentioned feed addresses into Feederader.

http://animationtipsandtricks.com/feeds/posts/default – A blog from Animation Mentor Team
http://feeds.feedburner.com/ProbloggerHelpingBloggersEarnMoney – Very popular Problogger blog, talks about the Making money while blogging
http://www.blendernation.com/feed/ – A blog about the cool Blender 3D software/news/movies.

To organize your feeds you can create folders by hitting Ctrl+F3 or choosing File > New > Folder. Once you create the folder, just drag the feeds into it.

You can share your feeds with your friends by sening a OPML file, OPML is an XML format for outlines. You can read more about it on the OPML website. An OPML file can be made that lists all the RSS feeds you subscribe to, and this can be very useful. Go to File > Export OPML and give it a name. Now select all the feeds in the Feedreader by pressing CTRL+A and hit delete key to delete everything. Choose File > Import OPML file and select the file you just saved. A new dialogue box will pop up where you can select which feeds you want to display in the Feedreader.

And here we go, all the feeds are back. Minimize the feedreader in the tray. It will sit there and tell you about the new headlines when it finds it.

To update a feed manually, right click on the feed name and choose update feed. You can also Edit, Rename and Mark Feed read from the menu that pops up.

Smart Feed

Smartfeed is one of most powerful and unique features of Feedreader. Smartfeeds provide way to constantly monitor incoming articles for information that is interesting to user. For example if you are interested in Photoshop then you just create a smartfeeds with words “Photoshop”, “Photoshop CS3″ and so on. After you have created smartfeed, it will be displayed on the left feed panel and always contains the up to date information about photoshop. Smartfeed is displayed with blue icon.

Click on the All News in the Feed panel and than choose File > New > Smart Feed. Create two rules, Title, Photoshop and Title, Blender; press OK to accept changes.

There are few more options there inside of Feedreader. I encourage you to have a look at them and experiment them. If you are new to RSS, have a look at RSS icons, it will help you in identifying the RSS feeds.

I hope this tutorial will be useful for you. I also request you to spread word CGSutra, do forward this tutorial link to your friends.