If you’ve been pottering around blogs and news websites over the last couple of years you will no doubt have come across the abbreviation ‘RSS’. RSS stands for any one of the following, depending on which technology you are using:
- Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0)
- Rich Site Summary (RSS 0.91, RSS 1.0)
- RDF Site Summary (RSS 0.9 and 1.0)
What is RSS?
Essentially, it’s a way to publishing frequently updated content, such as news, podcasts or blogs (like this one), in such a way that the content is pushed out to applications (called ‘feed readers’) so that a user can automatically access the content of his or her favourite sites without having to manually visit each site in turn.
Think of it in terms of e-mail. With e-mail you don’t go round each of your friends in turn and ask “Do you have any mail for me?” Your e-mail program simply logs into your mailbox and downloads all your latest messages. So it is with your RSS program, but instead of one mailbox it quizes all the news feeds to which you’ve subscribed and downloads all the latest content.
(Read more about RSS on Wikipedia.)
Standard RSS Feed icon
A while back a standard feed icon was designed and adopted by the Web community. It looks like this:
You can find out more about it and download the image in a variety of formats, sizes and colours from www.feedicons.com. But one format that you won’t be able to download from there is the Windows .ico format.
I use the excellent FeedDemon RSS reader software, which like all Windows software has its own unique application icon. But I wanted to use the standard RSS feed icon for it on my Quick Launch bar, so I created my own Windows icon file offering the icon in a variety of sizes (16×16, 24×24, 32×32 and 48×48) and colour depths (256 colours, True Colour and Windows XP format).
Download
Please feel free to download it, use it, adapt it for your own use.
Download RSS Feed icon (Icon, 40 KB)
License
This icon is intended for personal use, and should be used according to the Mozilla Feed Icon Guidelines.
