Re: OT: Easier way to read htp://forums.microsoft.com

From:

"David Ching" <dc@remove-this.dcsoft.com>

Newsgroups:

microsoft.public.vc.mfc

Date:

Tue, 5 Feb 2008 05:25:17 -0800

Message-ID:

<%tZpj.10577$EZ3.7071@nlpi070.nbdc.sbc.com>

"David Wilkinson" <no-reply@effisols.com> wrote in message
news:ewahrD$ZIHA.1204@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...

David:

I haven't really gotten into RSS. Could you explain a bit more how these
RSS readers deal with "ordinary" web pages (.htm, .php, .aspx or
whatever). I thought RSS had to do with .xml pages.

Or are the forum pages not ordinary pages?

[I know the web interface to the NNTP newsgroups contains an Active-X
control that allows a threaded view (if you use IE, which I don't). But
AFAIK the MSDN forums do not have this.]

The forum pages are ordinary HTML pages, but the RSS readers don't use
those. They use the RSS feed, which is XML. You get this URL by clicking
on the RSS logo on the forum page.

One drawback is that only the most recent posts are in the XML. So you
might get only the last 15 threads, even though there are hundreds shown on
the forum pages.

Another drawback is when you go to reply to a post, you have to show the
actual forum page and do it from there. Apparently there isn't enough info
to post a reply to a specific comment from the RSS reader (or if there is,
none of the RSS readers I tried support it). At least the RSS reader loads
the forum page for you so you don't need to find it in an external browser.

-- David