Windows 8.1: The Missing Manual

RSS Feeds

RSS feeds are like free headline services, reporting what’s new on different Web sites (news, sports, tech, whatever). There’s a great description of them on Inserting Links, Lines, or Smileys.

Microsoft must think a lot of RSS feeds, because it’s given you at least two different programs that can read them: Internet Explorer and Windows Live Mail.

Tip

If you subscribe to feeds in Internet Explorer, they show up in Mail, and vice versa.

Start by clicking the Feeds button (lower left of the Mail window), or by pressing Shift+Ctrl+K. The main window starts out empty; you’re expected to know the URL (Web address) of a feed you want to read.

If you’re an RSS fan, then you’re an executive-summary kind of person—and so here’s the executive summary:

• To add a new feed, click Feed on the Ribbon; in the resulting box, paste or type in the URL (the Web address) of that feed. Click OK. That feed’s name appears in the list at left.

  Keep expanding the flippy triangles until you see the list of individual headlines in the center column, where email messages would normally appear. Click one to read, in the Reading pane, the summary that it represents.

  You can work with feeds exactly the way you work with email: forward them, file them in folders, print them, and so on.

• To change the frequency of a feed (and how many headlines to keep), right-click its name; from the shortcut menu, choose “Manage ...