RSS History
RSS has been released in many different versions.
History of RSS
History of RSS
1997 - Dave Winer developed scriptingNews. RSS was born.
1999 - Netscape developed RSS 0.90 (supported by scriptingNews). This was simple XML with an RDF header.
1999 - Dave Winer developed scriptingNews 2.0b1 (including specifics from Netscape's RSS 0.90) at UserLand.
1999 - Netscape developed RSS 0.91. In this version, they removed the RDF header but included most features from scriptingNews 2.0b1.
1999 - UserLand dropped scriptingNews and solely used RSS 0.91.
Netscape ceased development of RSS.
2000 - UserLand released the official 0.91 specification.
2000 - A team led by Rael Dornfest at O'Reilly developed RSS 1.0. This format used RDF and namespaces. This version is often confused as a new version of 0.91, but it is a completely new format independent of RSS 0.91.
2000 - Dave Winer developed RSS 0.92 at UserLand.
2002 - Dave Winer developed RSS 2.0 after leaving Userland.
2003 - The official RSS 2.0 specification was released.
What are the differences?
RSS 1.0 is the only version that uses the W3C's RDF (Resource Description Framework) standard.
The idea behind RDF is to help build a semantic web. Read more about RDF and the semantic web here. Although this has little relevance to ordinary users, using 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.
Is there a web standard for RSS?
There is no official standard for RSS.
About 50% of RSS feeds use RSS 0.91.
Approximately 25% use RSS 1.0.
The remaining 25% use RSS 0.9x versions or RSS 2.0.