 about nigelparry.net Technologies: More about web feeds How do web feeds work? Each time you visit this page, an invisible script calls the latest headlines from lasiksurgerynews.com and displays them in the font face, color, and size that was specified when the code was generated.
The following webfeed is taken from LASIK Surgery News. Web feeds can be seamlessly integrated into existing websites by customizing their width, color and font size. In the example below, headlines from one site are hosted in a spare section of the navigation column on another.
What else can web feeds be used for?
Yet the application of the technology could go much further. In a university environment, for example, each department could be running a website that cross-markets its content to related departments. Meanwhile, the central university website could be compiling feeds from the various departments, arranged into themes that create, for example, a science portal or an online arts magazine. A department website may be divided into different sections offering information on courses, publications, and staff bios. As webfeeds allow for the thematic delivery of information, the central university website could compile publications information from each of the departments' "Publications" sections into a global "Publications" section. As each feed is updated at the department level, departments retain autonomy over their content on the main university website and—once set up—the central university webmaster need not update the various feeds and portals. As well as news sites and educational applications, there are clear information delivery benefits for international organizations such as human rights, charitable and other non-governmental organizations, as well as large information networks such as regional library systems, governmental information, and sports networks. The potentials of web feed sharing between sites has only begun to be explored. Even RSS feeds have not yet been utilized to the extent we envisage. |
