Newsletters and RSS feeds are crucial resources for staying updated in the ever-evolving landscape of web design and development.

With an abundance of information available, it’s easy to overload your inbox with unnecessary content. Fear not! We’ve sifted through the Internet to bring you the most pertinent and enlightening web dev newsletters.

We believe these fall into the “essential subscribe” category for the latest news and resources.

Fresh Coding and Design News

If you’re not staying updated daily, you’re already lagging. Keep pace with these articles, curated links, and tutorials.

Sidebar — A Top Newsletter to Keep You Informed on the Latest Web Dev Trends 

A handpicked list of the top five design links from the previous day. Collaboratively created, manually curated, consistently relevant, and always fresh as it’s published daily.

HeyDesigner 

Excellent articles curated for designers and front-end developers. This is an excellent source for innovative ideas about CSS, PSD to HTML conversion, Sketch, JavaScript, UX, typography, remote work, and personal development.

Web Designer News Daily — A Web Development Newsletter Every Designer Should Have 

This is a compilation of curated stories for web designers. Topics range from business to design news, and even quirky stories. They read everything and share only the best.

Web Design Weekly 

A weekly assortment of links to the best news and articles from around the net delivered straight to your inbox.

Front-End Front — A Web Development Newsletter Enjoyed by All Front-End Pros 

Crafted by front-end developers for front-end developers. Interactive format for posing questions and sharing work. Always up-to-date.

Web Development Reading List — Web Dev News from Across the Sector

This mostly weekly reading list is web-centric and cuts out the noise. Only the most relevant links are included.

Web Tools Weekly

This weekly newsletter for front-end developers and designers focuses on tools. You’ll get the latest updates on apps, scripts, and plugins, and each issue features a tutorial to help you use tools to solve problems and increase productivity.

Diving Deeper

Some of our favorite blogs also send out newsletters. You can rely on them to scan the horizon and inform you about upcoming trends. For comprehensive tutorials and stories, subscribe to these:

SitePoint.com — A Web Development Newsletter Offering the Latest Stories and Resources for Developers and Designers 

Current news, tutorials, tips, tricks, resources, and offers customized to your interests and requirements. Simply select your areas of interest and your newsletter covers the topics you need. WordPress, Front-end, and Design are just a few of the numerous options available.

The Smashing Newsletter 

This newsletter is sent out twice a month by the team at Smashing Magazine. The email newsletter provides useful tips, tricks, and resources for designers and developers. Every article is written and edited by the Smashing editorial staff; so you know it’s only the really good stuff.

A List Apart  — One of the Top Newsletters About Web Standards and Best Practices

Whether you choose the twice a month email or the RSS feed as items are published, you’ll receive content focused on web standards and best practices. This is one newsletter that addresses the professional aspects of designing and developing, not just the technical. It’s an excellent all-around resource.

CSS-Tricks 

This website covers much more than just CSS these days. They discuss all design and development topics from the perspective that the front-end is the best end. CSS tricks are still included regularly!

Frontenddev Weekly — A Remarkable Web Development Newsletter for All Seeking Inspiration

A fantastic assortment of resources, updates, and motivation delivered each week. There’s always something new to discover here. 

Frontend Focus 

Excellently selected, Frontend Focus spans subjects like CSS, WebGL, WebSockets and beyond. Plug your knowledge holes every Wednesday with this relative of JavaScript Weekly. 

JavaScript Weekly

Only once a week on Friday and purely JavaScript. It’s the optimal way to stay updated. It’s concise, it’s direct, and it’s where you’ll get your first scoop of JavaScript news.

Pluralsight

No need to fret if you missed the most recent weekly podcast from Pluralsight. The RSS feed will keep you in the loop. Receive the latest updates from the JavaScript community.

To Sum Up

Staying current in the rapidly evolving world of web development and design is made easier with the comprehensive range of newsletters available. These offer daily, weekly, and monthly updates on a broad range of topics.

 From Sidebar’s daily trends, HeyDesigner’s innovative ideas, to Web Tools Weekly’s tool-focused updates, and the deep dive into HTML and CSS from Sass News, these resources offer invaluable insights for every web professional.

These newsletters not only save you time but provide you with the most relevant and up-to-date resources in the industry. Make sure to subscribe and keep your skills sharp and informed.

The post Our Picks: Best Newsletters for Professional Coders appeared first on G2Read.

Microformats, as their tagline suggests, are designed for humans first and machines second. They are HTML-based formats that use specific values for class or rel attributes to mark up structured data in HTML documents. This makes it easier to publish and reuse various types of information like people, events, tags, and other relevant details found on the web.

For bloggers and website owners, this is great news as microformats offer a convenient way to make their content more structured and easily readable by search engines and other applications. Major websites like Google, Yahoo, LinkedIn, and many modern browsers support and use microformats extensively. This means that there is a high chance for microformats to gain even more traction and become a widely adopted standard in the future.

In addition to improving SEO, microformats also provide several other benefits. They allow for consistent data representation and make it easier to share information across different platforms and services. Microformats are also human-readable, which means that users can easily interpret the information. 

Now that we understand what microformats are, let’s explore where they can be applied and what popular microformats exist.

8 Useful Microformats You Might Want to Try 

#1: hCard

hCard is a user-friendly format for displaying contact information for individuals, locations, businesses, and other entities. It works by identifying key details such as name, address, email, and phone number using specific class names. This makes it easier for applications to extract this data and display it in a structured format.

#2: hCalendar

hCalendar is a popular microformat used for marking up event information. It allows individuals or organizations to publish their events on the web in a consistent and easy manner.  Similar to hCard, it uses specific class names to identify key details like date, time, location, and description of the event.

#3: hReview

hReview is a microformat specifically designed for reviews. It allows users to rate and review products or services on websites using specific class names for key details like rating, title, author, and content.  These reviews can then be easily aggregated and displayed in a structured format on other websites or applications.

#4: hResume

hResume is a microformat designed for publishing resumes. It allows for displaying ten essential areas of information and enables you to showcase your resume on your blog, which can be taken from LinkedIn or other sources.  This makes it easier for potential employers to find and access your resume on the web.

#5: hAtom

hAtom is a microformat specifically designed for marking up blog or article entries. It allows you to add structured data to your content, such as title, author, date published, and summary. This makes it easier for search engines and other applications to identify and display the relevant blog information. 

#6: hRecipe

In today’s day and age, how else would we exchange recipes? Whenever you want to share or find a recipe, hRecipe is the way to go. It contains all the critical details on ingredients, preparation, and more.

#7: RelTag

If you’re a blogger, then you know the importance of tags. Each post needs appropriate tags to help organize the blog. Semantic placement of tags is crucial, and that’s where RelTag comes in handy. It allows individuals to add tags with a specific rel attribute, making it easier for applications to identify and organize the tags.

#8: Rel-nofollow

If you wish to instruct applications not to follow certain links, then rel-nofollow is a useful tool. It allows individuals to add a rel attribute with the value “nofollow” to specify that certain links should not be followed by search engines and other web crawlers. This is often used as a way to control spam comments and preserve the integrity of a website’s outgoing links.

To Wrap Up

Microformats are powerful HTML-based tools that enhance the structure and accessibility of data on the web. They have wide-ranging applications, from marking up contact information with hCard, organizing events with hCalendar, collating reviews with hReview, showcasing resumes with hResume, to enabling the sharing of recipes with hRecipe. 

Importantly, for content creators, using the RelTag microformat can assist in semantic tagging of blog posts, while hAtom is particularly useful for structuring blog or article entries. 

Lastly, the Rel-nofollow microformat offers the ability to guide applications away from certain links. Embracing these microformats can significantly optimize your online content for search engines and improve the overall user experience.

The post 8 Useful Microformats You Should Consider Implementing appeared first on G2Read.

Artificial Intelligence and Personalization

Artificial intelligence (AI) is playing an increasingly important role in various areas of life, and RSS readers are no exception. The future of RSS readers will likely see more use of AI to personalize content. Machine learning algorithms will be able to analyze your interests, preferences, and reading behavior to suggest more relevant content. RSS readers will provide article recommendations based on your past behavior, making the reading experience more convenient and productive.

Integration with social media and platforms

In the future, RSS readers will probably integrate more closely with various social media and online platforms. This will allow users to get updates and content from their social media accounts, video hosting and blogs right in their RSS reader. This will save time and help users stay up-to-date without having to switch between different applications.

Multimedia content and podcasts

With the development of Internet technology, multimedia content is becoming more and more popular. In the future, RSS readers will probably support multimedia content such as audio and video as well as podcasts more extensively. Users will be able to subscribe to their favorite podcasts and receive automatic updates of new episodes right in their RSS reader.

Mobility and synchronization

Mobile devices are becoming more prevalent among internet users, and RSS readers will adapt to this change. In the future, users will expect full mobile support from their RSS readers, allowing them to read content anytime, anywhere. In addition, synchronization of subscriptions and settings between different devices will become standard, allowing uninterrupted access to content without the need to re-configure.

Enhanced filtering and sorting features

As the amount of content available increases, it becomes increasingly difficult to keep track of the topics and authors that interest you. The future of RSS readers will likely bring new filtering and sorting features that allow users more flexibility in customizing their content stream. Smart filters, tags, and the ability to mark and delete articles immediately from the feed will all help make reading more convenient and organized.

In conclusion, the future of RSS readers promises to be exciting, with the introduction of new technologies and features that will make the process of reading news and content online even more convenient and personalized. RSS readers will continue to be an important tool for those who want to keep up to date with the latest news and content of interest from a variety of sources.

The post The Future of RSS Readers: New Technologies and Trends in the Development of this Technology appeared first on G2Read.

Below will be a short list of the most relevant solutions now:

Feedly

Quite a popular project with a convenient clear interface. It has a function of recommending new sources on your interests in order to find interesting reading. In addition to traditional RSS, news sites, it also supports tracking Youtube subscriptions, Twitter and others. There are premium more advanced features like compatibility with third-party applications, but the basic for regular reading – quite enough.
Inoreader

Inoreader

This program (like most in this field) also allows you to follow any kind of content: Twitter, Facebook, RSS Feeds, podcasts, Youtube and even newsletters. In the regular free plan you are allowed to add an unlimited number of sources + there is a possibility of their effective filtering (for example, disabling entries by certain criteria). The software is easy to use and quite versatile, there is a mobile app, keyword search, etc.

Feedspot

It has a cool built-in search option that allows you to search for relevant information among the content from your subscriptions. Again, all current types of content sources are supported + you can combine several newsletters into one digest. The interface is simple, but at the same time functional – there is sorting, sorting in social networks, grouping channels into different RSS categories.

NewsBlur

A popular reader that allows you to view articles from websites in the same way as they are displayed online. At the same time, it works as a recommendation content service, meaning it will show the notes you are most likely to like and hide the unnecessary ones.

There are categories/tags to structure your catalog, content search, and integration with third-party offerings. About 60-some resources are allowed to be viewed for free, though a premium rate is also plus or minus available. There’s a web version and apps for all mobile OSes.

The Old Reader

A solution for fans of the simplest and most minimalistic design. Great for content sharing with friends – you can connect Facebook/Google accounts and get recommendations from them. There is a tab for trending articles that most users like. The free version allows you to track up to 100 RSS feeds. For more of them and search function you will have to take the premium version. Developers offer solutions for most operating systems and platforms.

FlowReader

Allows you to combine content from RSS and social networks in one place. Add all the blogs you want to follow to the system, there is no limit to the number of blogs you can follow. View post titles and read only what interests you.

You can also connect your accounts from Pinterest, YouTube, Reddit, etc. to FlowReader to be able to follow all users, channels, and topics from different sources. As in other programs, there are necessary options for structuring RSS feeds, sorting and shering. All for free!

Feeder

Allows you to view RSS feeds in their original form on any device. The logic of work here is similar to other solutions, but there is one difference – in addition to the usual reader you can use a special application for Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Yandex browsers to read RSS. This is especially handy if you’re used to quickly browsing headlines and not getting distracted by studying the whole article/news.

You simply click on the RSS icon in your browser and you’ll get a list of headlines of recently published notes. Click on any of the entries if it interests you. There is a mobile app (iOS and Android) where you can also get your RSS feeds with headlines and simplified content to read them wherever you are.

Feeder RSS

There are content selection filters, in the free version up to 100 feeds. Updates are not displayed in real time, but those notes that were published 2 or more hours ago are shown (interesting option to buy the premium version).

Feedreader Online

Another simple content aggregator with no unnecessary details. Here is the simplest functionality – collect the necessary RSS subscriptions in one place, view the content of feeds in collapsed or expanded form, as well as mark favorite items to read them later. From the basic tools for work there is sorting and grouping subscriptions into categories, hotkeys for navigation and work with the application.

Bottom line. RSS technology itself, I think, will live for a long time, because it is a very good way to distribute and aggregate information in XML-format. As for RSS reader programs, now they can collect information from different sites – news, social networks, video hosting, not only blogs, which allows them to stay afloat.

The post Best Programs and Services for RSS Reader appeared first on G2Read.

Turn to RSS-aggregators, because the user can not only enter into the program itself addresses of sites you like, but also use the proposed “reading program” lists. It is quite possible that your newsletter will be in them.

Use accounts in social networks (your own and friends), place there a link to your RSS feed and a few announcements of articles. Remember, you need to interest a potential subscriber.

Many people say that they do not see the point in creating a news feed using RSS technology, because it is successfully replaced by social networks, where there are many interest groups, and numerous reposts allow you to keep abreast of even those events that we are not interested in. But this is where the failure of this replacement lies. In social networks, going to check messages, a person risks even against his will to get information that he did not plan to get at all. It just falls out on him.

RSS-feed eliminates the very possibility of imposing unvaluable and unimportant information. The scheme is simple: the user is not interested in a particular news, he simply does not read it. But if the presented content caught on, then a person will easily become your subscriber. Therefore, to set up RSS on the site – it is, first of all, in the interests of resource owners.

Let’s consider several large services that successfully apply RSS technology in their work.

Bloglovin.com is a great representative of modern RSS trends. The resource is English-language, but it also interacts with blogs in Russian. After registration, a huge library becomes available, you can choose the topic yourself. The service will even offer options for what you may be interested in. Taking into account your requests, selected topics, it will regularly send new links.

In one place you can make a variety of subscriptions to receive the information you are interested in. The danger lies only in the fact that sooner or later these interesting things will be so much that the time to view them (not to mention reading) will not be enough catastrophically, and the sea of valuable information will remain out of your attention. Site registration for bloggers is not difficult. It gives a lot of chances that your newsletters will interest many people, because they are unusual, you have quality content – in short, all the conditions for the development of the site are met. So, it remains only to improve yourself (and improve your resource) and wait for the audience of the site will grow.

The Google Alerts service is interesting, with the help of which you can provide yourself with notification of key requests. And it works for both the user and the resource owner: It becomes possible to get the most satisfying information possible. On the other hand, one cannot help but notice the limitations created by these queries.

English-speaking bloggers quite appreciate the service Aweber, which allows you to create mailings (fully automated) and organize bonuses for subscribers.

There are many options to gain trust and popularity. The main thing is not to rest on your laurels and not to give up if something does not work out. Realizing the value of each subscriber for your customer base, you can roll mountains.

Especially if you have such a tool as RSS. With its help you immediately make people feel cared for: a convenient format of mailing, the ability to instantly learn about news in areas of interest – is this not a manifestation of attention and sensitivity! The news flow is huge and it is easy to get lost in it and not find useful information. Your RSS-feed becomes a guide, directs this flow along a calm course, allowing to single out the main thing and not to miss it.

For this, people respond to you with loyalty, the importance of which in today’s world of thousands of resources cannot be overestimated. By clicking on the “Subscribe” icon, the user, we can say, gives a certain credit of trust to the author, and his task now becomes reader retention.

The post How to Promote RSS Feed on the Site appeared first on G2Read.

If there is a desire to write the feed manually, then the given step-by-step instructions will help you.

• Choose the articles you want to inform your subscribers about (let them be about 15, no more), format the list in any text editor. It is necessary to immediately specify the titles, links and date of publication.
• Let’s start creating the RSS feed itself. Open Notepad (yes, this tool in the “Standard” tab is very useful). Write the name of the feed in the header, and place a link to your resource here. You can add a couple of introductory sentences, so that users understand where such a great newsletter comes from.
• Next, write articles according to the following cliché:

<item> <title>title</title> <link>link to article</link><guid> Unique ID for each article + once again link to article </guid><pubDate> publication date in the format – Mon, 2 Feb 2019</item>.

To make RSS on the site and not get confused, here are little hints to make things easier:

• News block between<item>…</items>tags.
• Header between <title> ….</title>
• A link to the full article <link>….</link>
• An abstract of the article <description>….</description>
• Publication date <pubDate>….</pubDate>
• Unique number and link again <guid>….</guid>
• After adding articles, carefully close <RSS> and <channel>tags (this function is performed by the “/” sign after the opening bracket). The tag opened first is closed last.
• We save, after which we need to change the file extension to “. XML” with the type “All files”. The name must be the same as the ribbon, only in Latin letters without spaces (hyphen between words).
• Validation. Self-written code is better to scan through a checker-service, there are many of them on the Web.
• If everything is correct, then the question of how to add an RSS feed to the site, in front of you no longer stands. Copy the file to the main folder of your resource on ftp.

Congratulations, you have your handmade RSS-feed in front of you.

Now you need to monitor its status and functioning. You can not overload the feed, so when adding new articles, the old ones should be deleted.

This is a universal algorithm suitable for any site. If you work on the WordPress platform, all these processes can be automated. First of all, we should remember that RSS to the WordPress site is characterized by multichannel (the ability to generate as many feeds as you want in different formats).

The post How to Create Your Own RSS Feed for Your Site appeared first on G2Read.

Browsers

In some browsers, the ability to subscribe to RSS feeds is already built into the interface, while others require the integration of special applications to activate this function.

Services and applications

Special programs for reading RSS, which are installed on your PC, allow you to sort even a large number of news with the help of rubrics, make bookmarks.

Readers or aggregators

The most convenient solution, suitable for both PC and mobile devices. You need to register, add links to RSS feeds you are interested in and the program is ready to use.

Aggregators not only track updates, but also adjust to your needs and desires: news will be reflected in a convenient format for you, you just need to configure the program.

Let’s look at examples of the above mentioned solutions for reading feeds.

Opera browser

It has a built-in solution for reading RSS feeds, which can be found in the menu item “Personalized News”. There is an option to create a personal feed, but you can also use a ready-made offer, which will form the program.

By the way, it’s not complicated, but that’s what makes it great: you only need to specify the site, and its RSS browser will find it by itself and add it to the reader. The reader itself is also quite simple: title and description. Sometimes a picture is added, if it is in the original source.

Inoreader (aggregator)

It is distinguished by functionality and simultaneous simplicity in work. One of the big pluses is the ability to get news even without access to the Web, thanks to data caching. Design templates (color schemes) and viewing styles (only news headlines or inclusion of details) allow you to choose the best solution.

The aggregator can be used as a standalone product or integrated into browsers, and there are mobile applications for different platforms.

In addition, Inoreader allows you to add an unlimited number of RSS feeds and categorize them. It is possible to include ready-made lists from other programs, so that you don’t have to form them anew.
Feedly (aggregator)

It is one of the largest and most popular aggregators. Among the disadvantages, users call the limited capabilities of the free version and the inability to set the Russian language interface. And if the claims to the basic configuration can be justified (keyword search is not available, only 3 feeds are added, the number of sources is limited), the interface should not be a problem – it is intuitive.

Feedly

The aggregator has a lot of advantages.

First, there’s no need to register: your accounts from some social networks and Google will do for logging in. No email or phone number confirmation required. You can create or import an existing feed right away and enjoy reading it.

It is possible to choose an acceptable variant of news display, categorize them, save your favorites (click on the star and don’t waste a lot of time searching for particularly favorite materials) and share on social networks. There are several fonts and color themes to choose from.

Newsflow (app)

There is no limit to the number of RSS feeds you can add, keyword search, video playback – this is all about the Newsflow app for Windows 10. Users note the incredible ease of integration and excellent interface.

For comfortable reading there is an option to customize the font size. Very convenient function to view the full text of the news without leaving the application.

The disadvantages include the inability to synchronize what you see and viewed in your phone and on your computer (when checking the newsletter on another device, you will have to scroll through it again).

Feed Reader (program)

A simple but very effective program that does its job well. RSS saves time that could have been spent searching for news, Feed Reader saves resources on finding a good RSS feed reader.

Convenient sorter, Cyrillic support, free, simple, so for many people this application is perfect. Thanks to Estonians who developed such a good program.

Readiy (app)

Not a bad RSS feed reader, simple and fast. It can be used on Windows tablets. It has almost no additional settings, there are limitations in filters.

The post Tools for Reading RSS Feed of a Site appeared first on G2Read.

Advantages of RSS feed

For the user:

• Economy

Interesting information is collected in one feed, familiarization with which takes less time and traffic than manual checking (when each site is opened, loaded, and then examined for updates).

• No fees

Sources value their interested readers.

• Quick notification

As soon as a favorite source is updated, subscribers are instantly notified.

• No ads

Annoying banner ads are annoying and distracting. With an RSS feed, this problem is eliminated. For a website, the advantages are an increase in the number of links leading to the resource (or link mass), the growth of its popularity, retention of regular users and attracting new audiences. The decision to place RSS on the site is correct, you just need to take some measures to protect yourself from the disadvantages of integrating the technology into the web resource.

Disadvantages of RSS

The minuses of the technology threaten only the owners of sites. For users, it remains attractive and useful. The only problem is that a person does not always have time to fully familiarize even with the news feed, because he subscribed to many resources.

For sites, everything is much more serious:

• Search filters

There is a risk that the RSS feed will appear in the index before the original source. And this is associated with all the charms of non-uniqueness, duplication and uselessness. Robots will not be persuaded, so it is better not to create an unpleasant precedent and put in the feed only announcements, not articles in their entirety, with an appeal to read the full version on the site.

• Content theft

And it’s instantaneous. As soon as you place a new original material on your resource, as it immediately appears on another site. Even top resources are not bent on using someone else’s articles. And the probability that your resource, entering the battle for the title of primary source with a recognized leader of the information market, will win, record low, if not negligible. And you should not count on the integrity of thieves: you will not find a link to the original source there.

Here we can also say a few words about parsing, which is greatly facilitated by XML-format. This type of industrial espionage and outright theft leads to the same extremely negative consequences in the form of filters and sanctions for non-unique content.

• Falling attendance

Even if there is a link to your resource, it does not mean that visitors will crowd to the site. There is no need for this, because they have already familiarized themselves with the article where they saw it. As a result, fall and your advertising revenue.

We didn’t bring these disadvantages to make you give up RSS immediately and permanently. Fids are necessary for your subscribers, and therefore for you. But how can you set up an RSS feed on your site to minimize the risk of such problems? You need to add caution to your actions: publish announcements instead of full texts, stimulating the desire to go to the site and read the original, and don’t add the feed to the various RSS directories immediately.

The post Main Advantages and Disadvantages of Creating an RSS Feed for a Website appeared first on G2Read.

RSS readers (or aggregators) are tools that allow users to receive content updates from various websites and blogs in an easy-to-read form. The acronym “RSS” stands for Really Simple Syndication. This data format has become popular on the internet to make it easier to subscribe to news and website updates without having to visit each page manually.

How it works:

• A website or blog owner creates an RSS feed that contains headlines, short descriptions, and links to new articles or content published on the site.
• Users interested in that site’s content can subscribe to the RSS feed using an RSS reader.
• When the site owner publishes a new article or updates content, the RSS reader automatically retrieves the information from the RSS feed and displays it in a user-friendly format.

Why they are needed

Saves time

RSS readers help bring all your interests and sources of information together in one place. You no longer have to check multiple sites looking for new articles or updates.

Content organization

You can structure your subscriptions by category, topic, or source, making your reading experience more convenient and systematized.

Ad-free reading

RSS readers typically allow you to receive text-only content without banner ads or other distractions.

Privacy

When using RSS readers, you don’t have to provide your personal information or register with every site you subscribe to.

Convenience on mobile devices

Many RSS readers are available on smartphones and tablets, allowing you to read content anytime and anywhere.

In short, RSS readers are a powerful tool for organizing, personalizing and optimizing your experience of reading news, blogs and content online. They help you stay on top of the latest updates and keep all your favorite sources in one place.

The post Introduction to the World of RSS Readers: What are They and Why Do I Need Them? appeared first on G2Read.