ScrollBox: Embed RSS Feeds

MakeUseOf has a post on ScrollBox which you can use to embed RSS Feeds onto your blog (if your blog service allows it).

Scrollbox will let you “generate dynamic widget for any given RSS feed. User can take the widget and easily add it to any site.”

Features:

* Easily embed rss feed into website.
* Customize text, color, text and background.
* Simple and easy to use.
* No registration.

How to Embed Almost Anything in your Website

How to Embed Almost Anything in your Website is a Digital Inspiration post with practical instructions on how to handle RSS feeds, videos, audio, photos and slideshows, web albums, events from Google Calendar, very large photos, charts and graphs, animated gifs and screencasts, chat functions, Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, spreadsheet data, PDF files, Flash (SWF or FLV files), LinkedIn profile, Google Maps, another webpage, Windows Media or QuickTime movies, other fonts, and FriendFeed lifestreams.

Whew!

Top 25 Non-Obvious Ways RSS Can Make Your Life Easier | Virtual Hosting Blog

Top 25 Non-Obvious Ways RSS Can Make Your Life Easier is a post on Virtual Hosting about — well, the title is obvious, isn’t it?

RSS made simple

What’s the easy way to use this RSS stuff to keep up with your various information sources?

The following will cover two browsers: Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox with the Sage add-on, and what to do if you can’t find the RSS but know it’s there.

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Internet Explorer 7

Internet Explorer 7 has a toolbar with the stars over on the left, and on the right is a house (for Home), the RSS symbol, the printer, etc.

When you reach a web page that has an RSS link on it, the RSS should turn orange and have a little sparkle on it:

As you see it here between the Home and the Printer icons. Click on the down arrow beside it and see all the possible RSS feeds on this site. Choose any one you want.

Now you see what the feed looks like.

On the left, the second-from-right star has a plus + beside it (it also appears on the instructions at the top of the feed). Click on that to subscribe to the feed.

You get a little popup window with the feed information already filled in.

Just click on Subscribe and it will be added to your feeds. You’ll be told you successfully subscribed.

Now when you click on Favorites or the star at the left of the toolbar, one of the options is Feeds. This shows up the RSS feed you’ve added along with any others.

When you have anything new at that feed that hasn’t been displayed in IE 7 yet, it should show up in bold font. If you’ve already seen everything, it shows up in regular font.

If you can’t find a feed but know one is there, click here.

Firefox with Sage add-on

Firefox comes without a lot of built-in features, so you can customize it as you choose, without loading up a lot of things you don’t use.

For RSS feeds, Firefox has several add-ons. Sage is a free add-on function for RSS feeds.

Firefox 2.x can use the Sage 1.3.10 add-on. Firefox 3 needs the Sage 1.4.2 or later, or Sage Too add-on instead.

Install the proper add-on for your version of Firefox, and restart Firefox.

Click on the green Sage leaf in the toolbar near the top, and then when Sage appears on the left, click on the Options and then Settings.

You can then select the Feed Folder, which may be one of the folders in your bookmark list (especially if you are using the Foxmarks add-on).

Click on the magnifying glass to search for feeds.

Select the feed you want. You can use Atom or RSS (2.0) feeds.

Click on it, and then click on Add Feeds to add it to the bottom of your list of feeds.

Close the Add Feeds window, and you can then arrange the feed into a folder if you like. For example, a folder can be created for all the feeds from the University, all the feeds for your favorite music sources, all the feeds for your hobby, etc. Just use the Options to organize your feeds.

What to Do When Your Browser Can’t Find the RSS But You Know It’s There

Sometimes websites outsmart themselves. They try to lock you into using a particular RSS feed manager, even if you’d rather use your IE or Firefox Sage to handle it. (They think they’re making it easier for you, or — at least — driving you towards somebody who pays them for the chance to show you advertising).

For example:

Example of forcing you to use an RSS manager site

Now, if you search this site for the RSS link, you may not find it with the normal methods.

Here’s the workaround:

Go up to your Toolbar and click on View, then select the choice with “Source” such as “View Source” or “Page Source”.

That gets you the HTML code that creates the page.

Now, use CTRL-F to Find anything with “feed” in it. For example, the page shown had this in the HTML code:

<atom10:link xmlns:atom10="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" rel="self"
href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/gizmosbest" type="application/rss+xml" />
<feedburner:emailServiceId>1157267</feedburner:emailServiceId>
<feedburner:feedburnerHostname>http://www.feedburner.com</feedburner:feedburnerHostname><item>

Aha! The name of the page is “Gizmo’s Best” and there it is in the code: http://feeds.feedburner.com/gizmosbest.

That’s what the actual link is. The rest of the stuff is sort of generic and not needed.

In Sage in Firefox, use the Options and Manage Feed List… to get a list of choices. Select New bookmark and then enter the feed in the proper space on the popup form.

In IE 7, use the star plus + icon and select Import and Export.

Select Import and then right-click on an existing feed (you might need to copy one first, to have it to spare.

Change the name, and then enter the feed information in the Address box.

Once you save that, you’ve got a brand-new feed.

Wigitize your RSS feeds

MakeUseOf has a review of Wigitize, which allows you to create a widget which turns RSS feeds to embeddable blog widgets.

“If you ever need to add some RSS feed to your website, Wigitize offers a quick and simple way to do that. No registration required, just enter the address of the website whose feed you want to use and click “Generate blog widget”. Once the widget is ready you can easily customize its style and visual appearance.”

Features

• Convert any RSS feed to a web widget.
• Embed widgets onto your blog or social networking profile.
• Customize widget: choose visual style, show/hide title and date, set number of feeds to be shown etc.
• No registration or sign up required.

Now, if we can only learn to agree on how to spell “widget”….

Add an RSS feed yourself

If you’re a user of RSS feeds, then you can add an RSS feed even if none exist, to your own site or document or someone else’s.

RSSPECT (with apologies to Aretha Franklin!)  allows you to add RSS feeds to someone else’s site (AnySite), your own site (MySite), or podcast feeds for use with iTunes.

RSS Feed Reader lets you add an RSS feed to your own pages.