History of RSS

RSS has been released in many different versions.

History of RSS

1997 - Dave Winer developed scriptingNews. RSS was born from this.

1999 - Netscape developed RSS 0.90 (supported by scriptingNews). This is a simple XML with an RDF header.

1999- Dave Winer developed scriptingNews 2.0b1 at UserLand (which included specific features of Netscape's RSS 0.90).

1999 - Netscape developed RSS 0.91. In this version, they removed that RDF header but included most of the features from scriptingNews 2.0b1.

1999 - UserLand broke away from scriptingNews and used RSS 0.91 solely.

Netscape ceased the development of RSS

2000 - UserLand released the official 0.91 specification.

2000 - A team led by Rael Dornfest developed RSS 1.0 at O'Reilly. This format used RDF and namespaces. This version is often confused with the new version 0.91, but it is a completely new format that does not depend on RSS 0.91.

2000 - Dave Winer developed RSS 0.92 at UserLand.

2002 - Dave Winer developed RSS 2.0 after leaving Userland.

2003 - Official RSS 2.0 specification released.

What are the differences?

RSS 1.0 is the only version that uses the W3C's RDF (Resource Description Framework) standard for development.

The philosophy contained in RDF is to help build a semantic web.Read more about RDF and the Semantic Web hereAlthough this has little to do with ordinary users, the use of web standards makes data exchange easier for individuals and applications.

Which RSS version should I use?

RSS 0.91 and RSS 2.0 are easier to understand than RSS 1.0. Our tutorial is based on RSS 2.0.

Are there Web standards for RSS?

There is no formal standard for RSS.

  • About 50% of all RSS feeds use RSS 0.91.
  • About 25% use RSS 1.0.
  • The last 25% use RSS 0.9x version or RSS 2.0.