RSS News Rendering Engine

If you don't know what is RSS news, check these references:

  1. What is RSS?

  2. Introduction to RSS

SlimBrowser has a build-in rendering engine for RSS news. It enables you to read RSS news inside SlimBrowser without the need of using external RSS reader software. To read RSS news in SlimBrowser, simply change the protocol prefix of the RSS feed URL from "http://" to "rss://". Type the modified URL into the address bar of SlimBrowser and press Enter. SlimBrowser will interpret the RSS feed and automatically show the news in the form of a readable and interactive web page. 

For example, http://rss.news.yahoo.com/rss/topstories is the RSS feed URL of Yahoo top stories. If you view this URL in SlimBrowser, you will see an XML file containing the news summary data. Now you need change the URL into rss://rss.news.yahoo.com/rss/topstories . Open the modified URL (we call it RSS url) inside SlimBrowser and you will the news summary is rendered in a readable web page.

You can add the modified RSS url into your favorites folder for easy access in future sessions.  You can also add one or more RSS url (rss://xxxx) into a site group.

Where to get RSS feed url?

Most big news sites now provide news content in the form of RSS feed. You need go to their website and look for an image like this:

The page containing all the RSS feeds will somewhere around this icon image. All you need do is change the protocol prefix into "rss://". After that, it will be directly readable in SlimBrowser.

A small list of RSS news feeds is available on FlashPeak website.

Customizable RSS Rendering Template

For flexibility, the RSS rendering engine is based on a template file. The template file is a HTML file named rss_template.htm which will determine the appearance and format of the rendered news. The template file is just a simple HTML file containing some macros which will be dynamically replaced during rendering. You can change the template file to suit your own preference. If you have designed a good template and feel like sharing it with SlimBrowser user community, don't hesitate to submit the template to us.