Using RSS to Keep up on new articles

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Until recently, I would look for new messages manually by scrolling down the topics on the forum, looking for icons that indicated material that I had not read already.  This is not all that hard to do, and a great way to introduce yourself to the forum. 

There is a much better way, though, to quickly see whether a new article has been posted, and whether the title is of particular interest to you.  The concept of RSS feeds has been around for quite a while, and I've only just now gotten around to checking it out.  If you're in the same boat, you've got a nice surprise coming.

The Curvemeister forum's RSS feed feature is a great way to keep up on the latest news.  The link is also located at the bottom of each Curvemeister web page.  Click on the link now and you may see some gobbledegook.  This is because you need a browser, or other program, to organize the feed for you.

FireFox or Explorer will show you a list of the most recent posts to the board, and you can click on a link to subscribe to the feed, and decide where in your favorites you want the feed to show up.  I generally choose the favorites bar.

After you've subscribed, you'll get a shortcut in the form of a drop-down menu of recent messages, with an icon for each article indicating whether you have read it or not.  The accompanying screen-shots show how this will look in FireFox and Internet Explorer 8. 

By default, your RSS feed will show the last 5 articles that have been posted.  You can change this by using the advanced RSS feed options, and a discussion of RSS feeds in general.

The curvemeister site also supports a WAP2 feed, that provides forum access in a compact, text only format.  It is intended for use on your phone or other portable data gadget.  This link is also at the bottom of the page, along with an XHTML link, of which I have no idea.