So I know many people see the RSS feed logo on a daily basis and have no idea what it does, or why it exists. RSS stands for rich site summary, and does exactly what the name implies – provides a detailed summary of what is happening with a blog, news feed, or website in general. Most people use RSS because it can streamline a user’s daily news. Instead of visiting all of the blogs I enjoy to check for new content, or signing up for newsletters, I can have news and posts piped right into my RSS client. In this case I’ll be using Mozilla’s discontinued Thunderbird mail and feed client. I love the program as a free offline mail program, for it’s scheduling ability, and feed following, did I mention it was free? Get it here.
This is an RSS icon, you’ve undoubtedly seen it before.
- Start by launching Mozilla Thunderbird
- Press alt to bring up your menu bar
- Navigate to File > New > Other Accounts…
- Select ‘Blog & News Feeds”
- Next
- Name your feed, I choose names based on how it will help me sort the feeds
- Next and finish
- In your left bar you should now see your new account, click on it
- Center top of your screen, click on “manage subscriptions”
- Paste or type in your feed URL
- Finish by clicking add
- Browse your new feed by clicking on it’s name in the left panel
- Double click a post title in the center window to open it in Mozilla Thunderbird