Live Bookmarks,

Browsers have always allowed you to bookmark your favorite web sites. Now browsers like Firefox allow you to create a live bookmark of a site feed so that you can quickly go to the newest content of the sites that you care most about.

A quick definition -

A site feed is a text file that allows a webmaster to share new content with an audience. Site feeds can take many formats including xml, rdf, atom, and rss. Site feeds are often referred to as a newsfeed, feed, blog feed, rss or atom. No matter the format or the name they all do the same thing allow you to get web-based content without having to visit a site.

Making a Live Bookmark...

Computing Services is deploying new computers with the Mozilla Firefox web browser. If you wish to use live bookmarks you need to start using Firefox as a browser as neither Netscape nor Internet Explore allow you this option. Launch Firefox by double clicking on its icon it is located on your desktop.

When Firefox detects a site feed on the page you are reading it will display a feed icon in the address bar of the browser.

When you click on that icon Firefox displays all of the feeds that it detects.

Notice: In this case you can live bookmark OET News or Help Desk News. Some web designers include code that allow you to add multiple site feeds from a page so make sure that you select the right feed.

Once you have selected the feed that you wish you are prompted to choose where to save this live bookmark within your bookmarks folder.

Expand the Create In pull down menu. Click the smaller Down Arrow to the right of the pull-down menu.

Now click on the New Folder button to create a folder to store all of your live bookmarks.

Now you are able to save the site feed to your Live Bookmarks folder.

Make sure that Live Bookmarks is highlighted and click OK.

Back in the browser you now have a Live Bookmarks folder in your bookmarks toolbar.

1. Single click the Live Bookmarks button to see the site feeds you have bookmarked

2. Single click on the Site Feed's name to see the titles of the new content available to you. New content will be posted in chronological order with the oldest items at the bottom newest at the top.

3. Single click on the title of the page you wish to read and Firefox will take you there.

Browser based live bookmarking provides you with a basic ability to utilize site feeds. Users with more advanced needs should consider a news aggregator. Find out more about news aggregators and Allegheny site feeds at http://www.allegheny.edu/news/feeds.php.

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