Overview

• Common RSS Data Store - The data store for all feeds managed by the RSS Platform. The RSS Platform API exposes these feeds after sanitizing, that is stripping it of scripts, embedded objects and other potentially malicious content. Access to unformatted XML for the feeds is also allowed.

• Common RSS Sync Engine - The sync engine is responsible for downloading the content at periodic intervals. By default, it does not download feed enclosures, which are objects attached to the feed; however this behavior is user configurable. However, it uses Attachment Execute Services to prevent automatic downloading of potentially malicious file types. It uses Windows' scheduled tasks
  Task Scheduler
  Task Scheduler is a component of Microsoft Windows that provides the ability to schedule the launch of programs or scripts at pre-defined times or after specified time intervals. It was first introduced in the Windows 95 Plus! pack as System Agent but was renamed to Task Scheduler in Windows 98...
  
   for scheduling and Background Intelligent Transfer Service
  Background Intelligent Transfer Service
  Background Intelligent Transfer Service is a component of Microsoft Windows XP and later operating systems that facilitates prioritized, throttled, and asynchronous transfer of files between machines using idle network bandwidth...
  
   for background downloading. In order to prevent the web server from being flooded on large number of feed downloads, it also adds slight random delay between requests.

• Common RSS Feed List - The list of feeds subscribed to is exposed by the RSS Platform APIs. All RSS clients, including Internet Explorer 7
  Internet Explorer 7
  Windows Internet Explorer 7 is a web browser released by Microsoft in October 2006. Internet Explorer 7 is part of a long line of versions of Internet Explorer and was the first major update to the browser in more than 5 years...
  
   and Microsoft Outlook 2007
  Microsoft Outlook
  Microsoft Outlook is a personal information manager from Microsoft, available both as a separate application as well as a part of the Microsoft Office suite...
  
  , share the list. All modifications thus are reflected across all the RSS readers.

Limitations

• Windows RSS Platform does not support feeds that reference a DTD
  Document Type Definition
  Document Type Definition is a set of markup declarations that define a document type for SGML-family markup languages...
  
  .
• Although feed reading view can be disabled, custom stylesheets cannot be applied to feeds in Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer uses an internal stylesheet for feed reading view.
• Prior to IE8, the RSS platform did not support authentication/storing credentials.
• The RSS Platform object model does not expose all XML elements and attributes.
• No support for the feed URI scheme  and Media RSS
  Media RSS
  Media RSS is an RSS extension used for syndicating multimedia files in RSS feeds. It was designed in 2004 by Yahoo! and the Media RSS community, and adds several enhancements to RSS enclosures...
  
  .
• The Windows RSS Platform normalizes all feed formats to RSS 2.0.
• Local file system and network feeds are not supported.
• Permanently downloading and saving content downloaded through the feed such as a podcast
  Podcast
  A podcast is a series of digital media files that are released episodically and often downloaded through web syndication...
  
   to a user folder is not supported. Downloaded content is only stored in the Internet Explorer Temporary Internet Files
  Temporary Internet Files
  Temporary Internet Files is a folder on Microsoft Windows which holds browser caches. The directory is used by Internet Explorer and other web browsers to cache pages and other multimedia content, such as video and audio files, from websites visited by the user. This allows such websites to load...
  
  cache.

See also

• Internet Explorer
  Internet Explorer
  Windows Internet Explorer is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, starting in 1995. It was first released as part of the add-on package Plus! for Windows 95 that year...
  
   7
  Internet Explorer 7
  Windows Internet Explorer 7 is a web browser released by Microsoft in October 2006. Internet Explorer 7 is part of a long line of versions of Internet Explorer and was the first major update to the browser in more than 5 years...
  
  
• Microsoft Outlook
  Microsoft Outlook
  Microsoft Outlook is a personal information manager from Microsoft, available both as a separate application as well as a part of the Microsoft Office suite...
  
   2007

External links

• Microsoft Team RSS blog
• Windows RSS Platform
• RSS Support in Longhorn