|
What' s with the orange
button?
If you'
re wondering what the orange little 
means, don't worry - most people don't know either
(yet). XML (Extensible
Markup Language) is a programming language
used to “describe data.” The orange
button is meant to inform the reader that it serves
as a link to a page containing XMyL.
In this case it' s being used to
describe information intended to be read by an
RSS reader. RSS
is a scripting language that conforms to XML standards.
There appears to be no universal definition for
they acronym, but the three most common ones are
“Really Simple Syndication,” “Rich
Site Summary,” and “RDF Site Summary.”
RDF stands for Resource
Description Framework. If you clicked on the
button and saw a bunch of code jargon and some
text, what you saw was the code behind an RSS
feed.
What' s the purpose of this code?
This is what our RSS Feed looks like if you're
using Pluck
as your RSS reader. |
The code you saw was not created
with the intention of being seen as it is, but rather
to display items (in this case, select Feature
Articles and News
Stories from GeoPlace.com) to anyone with an
RSS reader in a fashion similar to the way we display
news items on our News
Stories page. The RSS reader reads the tags
and information they contain and translates it all
into viewable content for the viewer, who can view
the content by either visiting the page that would
have otherwise displayed the information in its
bare-bones XML tags, or by visiting the page and
saving it to his/her RSS reader. Once the page is
saved to the reader, the viewer can simply look
at his/her reader and view any updates without actually
having to visit the site. Slowly
but surely more and more sites are starting to
use this feature. Since the typical viewer doesn't
know what an RSS reader is (let alone has one
installed), these feeds have mostly been limited
to large news or portal sites with more internet
savvy viewers.
|
