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56-494: The name Atom applies to a pair of related Web standards . The Atom Syndication Format is an XML language used for web feeds , while the Atom Publishing Protocol ( AtomPub or APP ) is a simple HTTP -based protocol for creating and updating web resources. Web feeds allow software programs to check for updates published on a website. To provide a web feed, the site owner may use specialized software (such as

112-461: A content management system ) that publishes a list (or "feed") of recent articles or content in a standardized, machine-readable format. The feed can then be downloaded by programs that use it, like websites that syndicate content from the feed, or by feed reader programs that allow internet users to subscribe to feeds and view their content. A feed contains entries, which may be headlines, full-text articles, excerpts, summaries or links to content on

168-664: A document in the Atom Syndication Format: The following tag should be placed into the head of an HTML document to provide a link to an Atom feed. Web standards Web standards include many interdependent standards and specifications, some of which govern aspects of the Internet , not just the World Wide Web. Even when not web-focused, such standards directly or indirectly affect the development and administration of web sites and web services . Considerations include

224-550: A feed's URI into the reader or by clicking on the browser's feed icon . The RSS reader checks the user's feeds regularly for new information and can automatically download it, if that function is enabled. The RSS formats were preceded by several attempts at web syndication that did not achieve widespread popularity. The basic idea of restructuring information about websites goes back to as early as 1995, when Ramanathan V. Guha and others in Apple 's Advanced Technology Group developed

280-408: A generic XML file. Although RSS formats have evolved from as early as March 1999, it was between 2005 and 2006 when RSS gained widespread use, and the (" [REDACTED] ") icon was decided upon by several major web browsers. RSS feed data is presented to users using software called a news aggregator and the passing of content is called web syndication . Users subscribe to feeds either by entering

336-435: A grassroots coalition fighting for improved web standards support in browsers. The web standards movement supports concepts of standards-based web design, including the separation of document structure from a web page or application's appearance and behavior; an emphasis on semantically structured content that validates (that is, contains no errors of structural composition) when tested against validation software maintained by

392-558: A major new version of the format, RSS 2.0, that redubbed its initials Really Simple Syndication. RSS 2.0 removed the type attribute added in the RSS 0.94 draft and added support for namespaces. To preserve backward compatibility with RSS 0.92, namespace support applies only to other content included within an RSS 2.0 feed, not the RSS 2.0 elements themselves. (Although other standards such as Atom attempt to correct this limitation, RSS feeds are not aggregated with other content often enough to shift

448-455: A newly set up mailing list. The next and final snapshot during this phase was Atom 0.3 , released in December 2003. This version gained widespread adoption in syndication tools, and in particular it was added to several Google-related services, such as Blogger, Google News , and Gmail . Google's Data APIs (Beta) GData are based on Atom 1.0 and RSS 2.0. In 2004, discussions began about moving

504-566: A podcast, a user adds the RSS feed to their podcast client, and the client can then list available episodes and download or stream them for listening or viewing. To be included in a podcast directory the feed must for each episode provide a title, description, artwork, category, language, and explicit rating. There are some services that specifically indexes and is a search engine for podcasts. Some BitTorrent clients support RSS. RSS feeds which provide links to .torrent files allow users to subscribe and automatically download content as soon as it

560-483: A project road map was built. The effort quickly attracted more than 150 supporters, including David Sifry of Technorati , Mena Trott of Six Apart , Brad Fitzpatrick of LiveJournal, Jason Shellen of Blogger , Jeremy Zawodny of Yahoo , Timothy Appnel of the O'Reilly Network , Glenn Otis Brown of Creative Commons and Lawrence Lessig . Other notables supporting Atom include Mark Pilgrim , Tim Bray , Aaron Swartz , Joi Ito , and Jack Park. Also, Dave Winer ,

616-469: A rallying point. People quickly started using the wiki to discuss a new syndication format to address the shortcomings of RSS. It also became clear that the new format could form the basis of a more robust replacement for blog editing protocols such as the Blogger API and LiveJournal XML-RPC Client/Server Protocol as well. The project aimed to develop a web syndication format that was: In short order,

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672-522: A result, publishers began placing HTML markup into the titles and descriptions of items in their RSS feeds. This behavior has become expected of readers, to the point of becoming a de facto standard. Though there is still some inconsistency in how software handles this markup, particularly in titles. The RSS 2.0 specification was later updated to include examples of entity-encoded HTML; however, all prior plain text usages remain valid. As of January 2007 , tracking data from www.syndic8.com indicates that

728-751: A standard way to export an entire blog, or parts of it, for backup or for importing into other blogging systems. It is common to find web feeds on major websites, as well as on many smaller ones. Some websites let people choose between RSS- or Atom-formatted web feeds; others offer only RSS or only Atom. In particular, many blog and wiki sites offer their web feeds in the Atom format. A feed reader or "aggregator" program can be used to check feeds and to display new articles. Client-side readers may also be designed as standalone programs or as extensions to existing programs like web browsers . Web-based feed readers and news aggregators require no software installation and make

784-463: A synopsis, but the RSS 1.* markup can be (and often is) used as an extension. There are also several common outside extension packages available, e.g. one from Microsoft for use in Internet Explorer 7. The most serious compatibility problem is with HTML markup. Userland's RSS reader—generally considered as the reference implementation—did not originally filter out HTML markup from feeds. As

840-534: A website along with various metadata . The Atom format was developed as an alternative to RSS . Ben Trott , an advocate of the new format that became Atom, believed that RSS had limitations and flaws—such as lack of on-going innovation and its necessity to remain backward compatible —and that there were advantages to a fresh design. Proponents of the new format formed the IETF Atom Publishing Format and Protocol Workgroup. The Atom Syndication Format

896-507: Is a specification or set of guidelines that, after extensive consensus-building, has received the endorsement of W3C Members and the Director. An IETF Internet Standard is characterized by a high degree of technical maturity and by a generally held belief that the specified protocol or service provides significant benefit to the Internet community. A specification that reaches the status of Standard

952-608: Is assigned a number in the IETF STD series while retaining its original IETF RFC number. HTML 5 contains numerous "willful violations" of other specifications, in order to accommodate limitations of existing platforms. There are compliance tests both for HTML code generated by websites as well as for the faithful interpretation of HTML code by web browsers. W3C offers online services to test websites directly for both web site developers, as well as for website users. These include: The Web Standards Project (WaSP), although development

1008-477: Is officially inactive , continues to offer two levels of testing services for web browsers: RSS RSS ( RDF Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication ) is a web feed that allows users and applications to access updates to websites in a standardized , computer-readable format. Subscribing to RSS feeds can allow a user to keep track of many different websites in a single news aggregator , which constantly monitors sites for new content, removing

1064-816: Is published. Some services deliver RSS to an email inbox, sending updates from user's personal selection and schedules. Examples of such services include IFTTT , Zapier and others. Conversely, some services deliver email to RSS readers. Further services like e. g. Gmane allow to subscribe to feeds via NNTP . It may be noted that email clients such as Thunderbird supports RSS natively. Both RSS and Atom are widely supported and are compatible with all major consumer feed readers. RSS gained wider use because of early feed reader support. Technically, Atom has several advantages: less restrictive licensing, IANA -registered MIME type , XML namespace, URI support, RELAX NG support. The following table shows RSS elements alongside Atom elements where they are equivalent. Note:

1120-542: Is to extend the basic XML schema established for more robust syndication of content. This inherently allows for more diverse, yet standardized, transactions without modifying the core RSS specification. To accomplish this extension, a tightly controlled vocabulary (in the RSS world, "module"; in the XML world, "schema") is declared through an XML namespace to give names to concepts and relationships between those concepts. Some RSS 2.0 modules with established namespaces are: Although

1176-861: The Blue Beanie Day , inspired by Jeffrey Zeldman, who is shown with a blue cap on the book cover of his 2003 book Designing with Web Standards . Since then, the 30 November is the annual international celebration of web standards and web accessibility . When a web site or web page is described as complying with web standards, it usually means that the site or page has valid HTML , CSS and JavaScript . The HTML should also meet accessibility and semantic guidelines. Full standard compliance also covers proper settings for character encoding , valid RSS or valid Atom news feed, valid RDF , valid metadata , valid XML , valid object embedding, valid script embedding, browser- and resolution-independent codes, and proper server settings. When web standards are discussed,

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1232-645: The Meta Content Framework . RDF Site Summary, the first version of RSS, was created by Dan Libby , Ramanathan V. Guha, and Eckart Walther at Netscape . It was released in March 1999 for use on the My.Netscape.Com portal. This version became known as RSS 0.9. In July 1999, Dan Libby of Netscape produced a new version, RSS 0.91, which simplified the format by removing RDF elements and incorporating elements from Dave Winer 's news syndication format. Libby also renamed

1288-730: The RSS Advisory Board with Brent Simmons and Jon Udell , a group whose purpose was to maintain and publish the specification and answer questions about the format. In September 2004, Stephen Horlander created the now ubiquitous RSS icon ( [REDACTED] ) for use in the Mozilla Firefox browser . In December 2005, the Microsoft Internet Explorer team and Microsoft Outlook team announced on their blogs that they were adopting Firefox's RSS icon. In February 2006, Opera Software followed suit. This effectively made

1344-615: The World Wide Web Consortium ; and progressive enhancement , a layered approach to web page and application creation that enables all people and devices to access the content and functionality of a page, regardless of personal physical ability (accessibility), connection speed, and browser capability. Prior to the web standards movement, many web page developers used invalid, incorrect HTML syntax such as "table layouts" and "spacer" GIF images to create web pages — an approach often referred to as " tag soup ". Such pages sought to look

1400-457: The asterisk character (*) indicates that an element must be provided (Atom elements "author" and "link" are only required under certain conditions). Several major sites such as Facebook and Twitter previously offered RSS feeds but have reduced or removed support. Additionally, widely used readers such as Shiira , FeedDemon, and particularly Google Reader , have all been discontinued as of 2013, citing declining popularity in RSS. RSS support

1456-402: The interoperability , accessibility and usability of web pages and web sites. Web standards consist of the following: More broadly, the following technologies may be referred to as "web standards" as well: Web standards are evolving specifications of web technologies. Web standards are developed by standards organizations —groups of interested and often competing parties chartered with

1512-842: The Web Standards Project replaced bandwidth-heavy tag soup with light, semantic markup and progressive enhancement , with the goal of making web content "accessible to all". The Web Standards movement declared that HTML , CSS , and JavaScript were more than simply interesting technologies. "They are a way of creating Web pages that will facilitate the twin goals of sophisticated and appropriate presentation and widespread accessibility." The group succeeded in persuading Netscape , Microsoft , and other browser makers to support these standards in their browsers. It then set about promoting these standards to designers, who were still using tag soup , Adobe Flash , and other proprietary technologies to create web pages. In 2007, Douglas Vos initiated

1568-460: The auspices of a traditional standards organization." A brief description of some of the ways Atom 1.0 differs from RSS 2.0 has been given by Tim Bray , who played a major role in the creation of Atom: The RSS 2.0 specification relies on the use of RFC   822 formatted timestamps to communicate information about when items in the feed were created and last updated. The Atom working group chose instead to use timestamps formatted according to

1624-539: The board revised their version of the specification to confirm that namespaces may extend core elements with namespace attributes, as Microsoft has done in Internet Explorer 7. According to their view, a difference of interpretation left publishers unsure of whether this was permitted or forbidden. RSS is XML -formatted plain text. The RSS format itself is relatively easy to read both by automated processes and by humans alike. An example feed could have contents such as

1680-487: The company, also removing documentation and tools that supported the format. Two parties emerged to fill the void, with neither Netscape's help nor approval: The RSS-DEV Working Group and Dave Winer, whose UserLand Software had published some of the first publishing tools outside Netscape that could read and write RSS. Winer published a modified version of the RSS 0.91 specification on the UserLand website, covering how it

1736-434: The context of an Atom feed document. For instance, it is not uncommon to find atom:link elements being used within RSS 2.0 feeds. Despite the emergence of Atom as an IETF Proposed Standard and the decision by major companies such as Google to embrace Atom, use of the older and better-known RSS formats has continued. There are several reasons for this: Before the creation of Atom the primary method of web content syndication

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1792-450: The feed. Atom also differs from RSS in that it supports the use of Internationalized Resource Identifiers , which allow links to resources and unique identifiers to contain characters outside the US ASCII character set. The elements of the RSS vocabulary are not generally reusable in other XML vocabularies. The Atom syntax was specifically designed to allow elements to be reused outside

1848-716: The following publications are typically seen as foundational: Web accessibility is normally based upon the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines published by the W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative . Work in the W3C toward the Semantic Web is currently focused by publications related to the Resource Description Framework (RDF), Gleaning Resource Descriptions from Dialects of Languages (GRDDL) and Web Ontology Language (OWL). A W3C Recommendation

1904-703: The following versions: The RSS 2.* branch (initially UserLand, now Harvard) includes the following versions: Later versions in each branch are backward-compatible with earlier versions (aside from non-conformant RDF syntax in 0.90), and both versions include properly documented extension mechanisms using XML Namespaces, either directly (in the 2.* branch) or through RDF (in the 1.* branch). Most syndication software supports both branches. "The Myth of RSS Compatibility", an article written in 2004 by RSS critic and Atom advocate Mark Pilgrim , discusses RSS version compatibility issues in more detail. The extension mechanisms make it possible for each branch to copy innovations in

1960-431: The following: When retrieved, RSS reading software could use the XML structure to present a neat display to the end users. There are various news aggregator software for desktop and mobile devices, but RSS can also be built-in inside web browsers or email clients like Mozilla Thunderbird . There are several different versions of RSS, falling into two major branches (RDF and 2.*). The RDF (or RSS 1.*) branch includes

2016-481: The format from RDF to RSS Rich Site Summary and outlined further development of the format in a "futures document". This would be Netscape's last participation in RSS development for eight years. As RSS was being embraced by web publishers who wanted their feeds to be used on My.Netscape.Com and other early RSS portals, Netscape dropped RSS support from My.Netscape.Com in April 2001 during new owner AOL 's restructuring of

2072-431: The key figure behind RSS 2.0, gave tentative support to the new endeavor. After this point, discussion became chaotic, due to the lack of a decision-making process. The project also lacked a name, tentatively using "Pie," "Echo," "Atom," and "Whatever" (PEAW) before settling on Atom. After releasing a project snapshot known as Atom 0.2 in early July 2003, discussion was shifted off the wiki. The discussion then moved to

2128-494: The lack of a caching page layout language, made web sites "heavy" in terms of bandwidth, as did the frequent use of images as text. These bandwidth requirements were burdensome to users in developing countries, rural areas, and wherever fast Internet connections were unavailable. The Web Standards movement pioneered by Glenn Davis , George Olsen, Jeffrey Zeldman , Steven Champeon, Todd Fahrner, Eric A. Meyer , Tantek Çelik , Dori Smith, Tim Bray , Jeffrey Veen, and other members of

2184-556: The name RDF Site Summary from RSS 0.9, reintroduced support for RDF and added XML namespaces support, adopting elements from standard metadata vocabularies such as Dublin Core . In December 2000, Winer released RSS 0.92 a minor set of changes aside from the introduction of the enclosure element, which permitted audio files to be carried in RSS feeds and helped spark podcasting . He also released drafts of RSS 0.93 and RSS 0.94 that were subsequently withdrawn. In September 2002, Winer released

2240-548: The need for the user to manually check them. News aggregators (or "RSS readers") can be built into a browser , installed on a desktop computer , or installed on a mobile device . Websites usually use RSS feeds to publish frequently updated information, such as blog entries, news headlines, episodes of audio and video series, or for distributing podcasts . An RSS document (called "feed", "web feed", or "channel") includes full or summarized text, and metadata , like publishing date and author's name. RSS formats are specified using

2296-466: The number of items in an RSS channel is theoretically unlimited, some news aggregators do not support RSS files larger than 150KB. For example, applications that rely on the Common Feed List of Windows might handle such files as if they were corrupt, and not open them. Interoperability can be maximized by keeping the file size under this limit. Podcasts are distributed using RSS. To listen to

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2352-467: The orange square with white radio waves the industry standard for RSS and Atom feeds, replacing the large variety of icons and text that had been used previously to identify syndication data. In January 2006, Rogers Cadenhead relaunched the RSS Advisory Board without Dave Winer's participation, with a stated desire to continue the development of the RSS format and resolve ambiguities. In June 2007,

2408-412: The other. For example, the RSS 2.* branch was the first to support enclosures , making it the current leading choice for podcasting, and as of 2005 is the format supported for that use by iTunes and other podcasting software; however, an enclosure extension is now available for the RSS 1.* branch, mod_enclosure. Likewise, the RSS 2.* core specification does not support providing full-text in addition to

2464-632: The popularity from RSS to other formats having full namespace support.) Because neither Winer nor the RSS-DEV Working Group had Netscape's involvement, they could not make an official claim on the RSS name or format. This has fueled ongoing controversy in the syndication development community as to which entity was the proper publisher of RSS. One product of that contentious debate was the creation of an alternative syndication format, Atom, that began in June 2003. The Atom syndication format, whose creation

2520-573: The project to a standards body such as the World Wide Web Consortium or the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). The group eventually chose the IETF and the Atompub working group was formally set up in June 2004, finally giving the project a charter and process. The Atompub working group is co-chaired by Tim Bray (the co-editor of the XML specification) and Paul Hoffman . Initial development

2576-538: The rules specified by RFC   3339 (which is a subset of ISO 8601 ; see Appendix A in RFC 3339 for differences). While the RSS vocabulary has a mechanism to indicate a human language for the feed, there is no way to specify a language for individual items or text elements. Atom, on the other hand, uses the standard xml:lang attribute to make it possible to specify a language context for every piece of human-readable content in

2632-430: The same in all browsers of a certain age (such as Microsoft Internet Explorer 4 and Netscape Navigator 4), but were often inaccessible to people with disabilities. Tag soup pages also displayed or operated incorrectly in older browsers, and required code forks such as JavaScript for Netscape Navigator and JScript for Internet Explorer that added to the cost and complexity of development. The extra code required, and

2688-562: The task of standardization—not technologies developed and declared to be a standard by a single individual or company. It is crucial to distinguish those specifications that are under development from the ones that already reached the final development status (in case of W3C specifications, the highest maturity level). The earliest visible manifestation of the web standards movement was the Web Standards Project , launched in August 1998 as

2744-431: The three main versions of RSS in current use are 0.91, 1.0, and 2.0, constituting 13%, 17%, and 67% of worldwide RSS usage, respectively. These figures, however, do not include usage of the rival web feed format Atom. As of August 2008 , the syndic8.com website is indexing 546,069 total feeds, of which 86,496 (16%) were some dialect of Atom and 438,102 were some dialect of RSS. The primary objective of all RSS modules

2800-510: The user's "feeds" available on any computer with web access. Some aggregators syndicate (combine) web feeds into new feeds, e.g., taking all football-related items from several sports feeds and providing a new football feed. When Atom emerged as a format intended to rival or replace RSS , CNET described the motivation of its creators as follows: " Winer's opponents are seeking a new format that would clarify RSS ambiguities, consolidate its multiple versions, expand its capabilities, and fall under

2856-477: Was being used in his company's products, and claimed copyright to the document. A few months later, UserLand filed a U.S. trademark registration for RSS, but failed to respond to a USPTO trademark examiner's request and the request was rejected in December 2001. The RSS-DEV Working Group, a project whose members included Aaron Swartz , Guha and representatives of O'Reilly Media and Moreover , produced RSS 1.0 in December 2000. This new version, which reclaimed

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2912-545: Was focused on the syndication format. The Atom Syndication Format was issued as a Proposed Standard in IETF RFC   4287 in December 2005. The co-editors were Mark Nottingham and Robert Sayre. This document is known as atompub-format in IETF's terminology. The Atom Publishing Protocol was issued as a Proposed Standard in IETF RFC   5023 in October 2007. Two other drafts have not been standardized. An example of

2968-451: Was in part motivated by a desire to get a clean start free of the issues surrounding RSS, has been adopted as IETF Proposed Standard RFC   4287 . In July 2003, Winer and UserLand Software assigned the copyright of the RSS 2.0 specification to Harvard's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society , where he had just begun a term as a visiting fellow. At the same time, Winer launched

3024-771: Was published as an IETF proposed standard in RFC   4287 (December 2005), and the Atom Publishing Protocol was published as RFC   5023 (October 2007). The blogging community uses web feeds to share recent entries' headlines, full text, and even attached multimedia files. The providers allow other websites to incorporate a blog's "syndicated" headline or headline-and-short-summary feeds under various usage agreements. As of 2016 people use Atom and other web-syndication formats for many purposes, including journalism, marketing, bug-reports, or any other activity involving periodic updates or publications. Atom also provides

3080-791: Was removed in OS X Mountain Lion 's versions of Mail and Safari , although the features were partially restored in Safari 8. Mozilla removed RSS support from Mozilla Firefox version 64.0, joining Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge which do not include RSS support, thus leaving Internet Explorer as the last major browser to include RSS support by default. Since the late 2010s there has been an uptick in RSS interest again. In 2018, Wired published an article named "It's Time for an RSS Revival", citing that RSS gives more control over content compared to algorithms and trackers from social media sites. At that time, Feedly

3136-404: Was the RSS family of formats. Members of the community who felt there were significant deficiencies with this family of formats were unable to make changes directly to RSS 2.0 because the official specification document stated that it was purposely frozen to ensure its stability. In June 2003, Sam Ruby set up a wiki to discuss what makes "a well-formed log entry". This initial posting acted as

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