Member Avatar for schwarznavy

Greetings from Japan.

I'd like to display a few RSS feeds from other web sites on my web site in a tabbed box, where each tab signifies a feed from each of those sites.

I'm trying to keep the Web site as simple as possible to make our site as accessible as possible, regardless of how our visitors have their web browsers set up.

I already have a little bit of Javascript on my page, which I believe doesn't require visitors to have additional software installed (like Flash or Java). I also believe Javascript only requires the visitor's security setting for "Active Scripting" to be enabled (for Internet Explorer). I'm not sure of the requirements for other browsers.

Another reason I'd like to keep the page simple is because a lot of our visitors come from U.S. Navy ships. Their computers have tons of limitations regarding what software can be installed and how their programs' settings are set, and When underway their Internet bandwidth is limited -- so I'd like our page to be as speedy as possible.

Following this line of reasoning, is using Javascript to display RSS feeds the best choice? I don't know anything about PHP, shtml, ASP, etc. and I don't know if using them to display the RSS feeds would require visitors to have other Internet settings set in a specific way. -- I'd like to minimize the amount of e-mails that start with, "I can't see your page properly."

If you suggest Javascript, does anyone know a good script/program that'll allow me to implement a Tabbed box of feeds on my web page. It would be best if I could fully customize it to be in the same style as the rest of the page -- fonts, colors, sizes, etc. I do use some CSS.

Thank you very much.
Matthew Schwarz

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Member Avatar for MattEvans

PHP, shtml, ASP etc generally have no requirements for client machine settings, Javascript is more 'risky' than any of these, since it is dependant on client settings.

RSS is just XML; so you could style it directly. Yep, directly. XML can have CSS style. I've never done it, but it can be done. See this page: http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2000/05/03/msie/index.html.

If you do that; you could just load the RSS file directly into an iframe or similar, and style it with CSS and/or XSLT. Instant solution seemingly; but it might require some work to get it working across all browsers.

Alternatively; you could use serverside (PHP, ASP, XSLT, and ) or clientside (Javascript,XSLT [yep its both]) code to parse the RSS and convert it into HTML. Or use something like http://www.rss-to-javascript.com/ http://magpierss.sourceforge.net/ http://www.feedforall.com/free-php-script.htm ( none of these tested; not recommendations, just google results )

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