Script: Adding an RSS Feed (Thunderbird)
Overview
This screencast with audio demonstrates how to add an RSS feed in Mozilla Thunderbird.
Audio Script
Slide 1: To add RSS feeds in Mozilla Thunderbird you first have to create an RSS account. RSS feeds don't have or really need any account information, but since everything else in Thunderbird, i.e. Email and USENET newsgroups, is based on the account concept you have to perform this simple step of creating a pseudo-account in order to enable the RSS functionality. Let's do so now.
S2: Like all new accounts you also create this one by going to the Tools menu,...
S3:
S4: ...and there to Account Settings.
S5: Go to Add Account...
S6: and select RSS News & Blogs.
S7:
S8: Give this account a name – under this name this pseudo-account and under it all subsequently added RSS feeds [highlight left section and there RSS pseudo account] are going to appear in the account and folder overview on the left side of the Thunderbird window.
S9: [1.5s Pause] Click...
S10: ...Finish...
S11: and OK,...
S12: and that was all. We didn't add any RSS feed yet, we only enabled the RSS feed option at all.
S13: Under the name we have just given this pseudo-account we are now able to add any number of different RSS feeds.You need just this one pseudo-account, you do not need any other for RSS feeds from different sources – any RSS feeds we add from all kinds of sources are all going to appear here. Of course, no one prevents you from adding other RSS pseudo-accounts, for example as a way to create a top-level structure if you are going to subscribe to a lot of RSS feeds and would like to keep some order.
S14: In order to add an RSS feed click on the new pseudo-account,...
S15: ... go to Manage Scubscriptions and...
S16: ...click on the Add button.
S17: Now Thunderbird wants to know a URL for an RSS feed from you. How do you get one, especially if you don't know much or anything about URLs and RSS?
[Pause 2s]
S18: I'm going to show you using an example. Usually you get such URLs from webpages. Let's go
S19: to the CNN homepage, because I know...
S20: ...I'm going to find quite a few different RSS feeds there.
S21: On the Homepage we have two options. The first one is the easiest one. Almost always websites that offer RSS feeds announce that fact in your browsers address bar using this icon. This works in both Firefox 2 and...
S22: ...in Microsoft Internet Explorer 7, but in that browser the icon is split, and you have to click on the down-arrow part of it to see all feeds.
S23: If you click on the RSS icon...
S24: ...you are shown the available feeds on this page. By clicking on one of them...
S25: ... the webbrowser displays that particular feed. I should mention that while todays webbrowsers can detect RSS feeds of websites that announce them in their webpages and display them they don't work well as RSS readers, because an important feature of RSS readers like Thunderbird is to manage a lot of different feeds at the same time, which is the whole point of RSS feeds.
S26: As you can see Firefox allows you to subscribe to the feed using an external RSS reader. It even offers Thunderbird as an option. However, that does not seem to work, so I have to continue my demonstration by showing how to add the feed using the method we already started and ignore this "Subscribe Now" button.
S27: So we wanted the URL of the RSS feed, and we have found it. You can now copy that URL and paste it into the Thunderbird dialog still open behind the webbrowser.
S28: However, back in the page where we found the RSS feed we also find an RSS link in the page area itself. Let's click on it,...
S29: ...which shows us there are a lot more feeds available...
S30: ...on this website! By the way, now those additional feeds also show up when I click the RSS icon in the browser.
It is important for you as a user to understand: A webbrowser does not magically detect all RSS feeds of a website when you visit any page of that website. In the invisible part of the webpage there is information about which feeds exist on the site, but this information is optional and the feed has nothing to do with the page you are viewing – feeds are a service of the whole webSITE, and not of a particular webPAGE.
That is why you cannot rely that all or any available RSS feeds show up in that orange browser icon. In fact, they may not show up anywhere if the owner of the website forgets to add information about available RSS feeds to their webpages.
So anyway, as you can see the CNN website lists all URLs for all their RSS feeds, and we can...
S31: ...now copy them one by one...
S32: ...using the context menu,...
S33: ... to add them in Thunderbird.
S34 : Back in the still open Thunderbird window...
S35: ...we paste the URL...
S36: ...that we have copied from...
S37: ...the webpage and click OK.
The "Store Articles in:" lets you add a feed to an already existing feed folder. If you do that you won't know any more where a headline came from except for by really looking at it, which is part of the whole RSS concept but may become strange if you add an RSS feed for headlines from a medical journal to one with the latest technical news from your Internet provider.
If you check the "Show the article summary" box only the summary that is part of the RSS headline is shown.
Some background information: An RSS feed consists of many headline items. Each one has a headline, a link to a webpage with the full story, and a short description. Usually Thunderbird loads the linked webpage, but if that box is checked it only shows the short description, and you can click on the link – which it also displays in the header of an RSS article – to get the full story.
The drawback: Some RSS feeds have no description, or one that is so short that the headline is just as good. So personally, I keep this box unchecked and have Thunderbird load the linked webpage for an article.
S38: After clicking OK Thunderbird verifies...
S39: ...and loads the feed's articles. If the URL you entered is not a valid feed you'll get an error.
S40: You can now click on the feed to see...
S41: ...the headlines.
S42: If you click on a headline you are going to get the short description or the linked webpage, depending on what you selected when adding the feed.