Getting started with Blogs & News Feeds

Subscribing to blogs & news feeds

If you have set up a Blogs & News account, you can subscribe to Blogs & News feeds.

To subscribe to a feed, begin from the Mail window:

1. Get into the Feed Subscriptions dialog. There are several ways to do this:
   • In the accounts pane, click your desired Blogs & News Feeds account to manage, then click in the Manage Subscriptions in the right pane.
   • In the accounts pane, click your desired Blogs & News Feeds account to manage, or a feed inside it, then open the File menu and choose Subscribe.
   • In the accounts pane, right click your desired Blogs & News Feeds account to manage and choose Subscribe...
   • Open the Edit menu and select the Mail & Newsgroups Account Settings option. In the Mail & Newsgroups Account Settings dialog, click on a Blogs & News Feeds account main section, and then click the Manage Subscriptions... button.
2. Once in the Feed Subscriptions dialog, click the Add button. The Feed properties dialog will appear.
3. Type (or copy and paste) the feed URL into the Feed URL field.
4. Click Store articles in dropdown list to choose the item list where you want the articles to be stored. This allows you to merge multiple feeds in one list item.
5. Set Show the article summary instead of loading the web page to display a brief summary that blog feeds usually include for each article.

   Tip: Showing the article summary reduces the bandwidth traffic and is faster, since the summary is already downloaded when the feed is checked for new items. However, if you usually are interested in the full article, you will save time by unchecking this option.

6. Click OK to confirm the feed addition.

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Subscribing to blogs & news feeds from a browser window

While browsing the web using &brandShortName;, you may find the Feed discovery icon () while visiting a web page. You can click on it to see a list of available feeds and choose one to get it added to your first Blogs & News Feeds account.

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Reading blogs & news feeds messages

When you open your Blogs & News account, you see the list of feeds to which you subscribed. &brandShortName; checks and downloads every feed for new messages.

To read blogs & news messages, begin from the Mail window:

1. Double-click a blogs & news account to see its feeds. (If there are no feeds, you may need to subscribe to one.)
2. Click a feed name to see its messages.
3. Click a message to read it. The header will show the original URL of the article, which you can click to open a browser window with the corresponding webpage.

Depending on your settings for the Blogs & News account and each individual feed, the message will be shown in its summarized view or the full view. You can change it by choosing the menu option View, and then Feed Message Body As. You can then select one of these options:

• Web Page: Select this to show the full web page of this message.
• Summary: Select this to show the summarized, short version of this message.
• Default format: Select this to show the article in its default format, as specified in the feed options or, otherwise, the Blogs & News account.

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Posting blog messages

To post a blog message, you need an account in the corresponding blog. Also, there is no standardized way to post blog messages, so you won't normally be able to post messages from &brandShortName; Mail component. Instead, you will need to open a browser window, log in to your blog account and use the web interface.

Some blog systems, however, allow posting blog messages by sending an email message to a specific address. You will need to find out if your blog service implements this feature, and the correct email address to use.

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Adding comments to a blog post

Since there is no standardized way to add comments to a blog post, you will usually need to open a browser window and use the web interface.

Some blog systems, however, allow adding comments by sending an email message to a specific address. You will need to find out if the blog service implements this feature, and the correct email address to use.

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Exporting and importing feeds

If you have set up a Blogs & News account, you can export or import Blogs & News feed collections using the OPML format (Outline Processor Markup Language).

To export the feeds in your selected blogs & news account, begin from the Mail window:

1. In the accounts pane, click your desired Blogs & News account to manage, or a feed inside it.
2. Open the File menu and choose Subscribe (or use any other of the available methods. to access to the Feed Subscriptions dialog box).
3. In the Feed Subscriptions dialog, click the Export button. The Export feeds as an OPML file dialog will appear.
4. Select the directory and filename to save the OPML file, and click Save.

To import the feeds in your selected blogs & news account, begin from the Mail window:

1. In the accounts pane, click your desired Blogs & News account to manage, or a feed inside it.
2. Open the File menu and choose Subscribe (or use any other of the available methods. to access to the Feed Subscriptions dialog box).
3. In the Feed Subscriptions dialog, click the Import button. The Select OPML file to import dialog will appear.
4. Select the directory and filename to load the OPML file, and click Save.
5. All the feeds defined in the OPML file will be added to your blogs & feeds account.

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Editing a feed

If you want to change the properties of one of the feeds in your blogs & news account, you can edit it.

To edit a feed in your selected blogs & news account, begin from the Mail window:

1. In the accounts pane, click your desired Blogs & News account to manage, or a feed inside it.
2. Open the File menu and choose Subscribe (or use any other of the available methods. to access to the Feed Subscriptions dialog box).
3. In the Feed Subscriptions dialog, click on a feed in the feed list. You may need to expand the folders in the feed list to see each individual feed.
4. Click the Edit button. The Feed properties dialog will appear.
5. You can change where you want the articles to be stored clicking the Store articles in dropdown list.
6. You may mark Show the article summary instead of loading the web page to display a brief summary that blog feeds usually include for each article.

   Tip: Showing the article summary reduces the bandwidth traffic and is faster, since the summary is already downloaded when the feed is checked for new items. However, if you usually are interested in the full article, you will save time by unchecking this option.

7. Click OK to confirm the changes.

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Removing a feed

If you no longer want to follow one of the feeds in your blogs & news account, you can remove it.

To remove a feed in your selected blogs & news account, begin from the Mail window:

1. In the accounts pane, click your desired Blogs & News account to manage, or a feed inside it.
2. Open the File menu and choose Subscribe (or use any other of the available methods. to access to the Feed Subscriptions dialog box).
3. In the Feed Subscriptions dialog, click on a feed in the feed list. You may need to expand the folders in the feed list to see each individual feed.
4. Click the Remove button. You will be asked to confirm the deletion of the feed.

Note: don't confuse a feed with a folder in a Blogs & News account. Removing a feed doesn't delete the folder in which the feed articles are stored, and thus, such articles will stay in the folder until you delete either the whole folder or the articles themselves. To get a better understanding, see Organizing your feeds later in this section.

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Using different blogs & news feeds accounts

A single blogs & news feeds account can contain any number of feeds in it, so you don't strictly need more than one blogs & news feeds account. However, you may want to create several blogs & news feeds accounts. Some reasons to do that are:

• You can use different accounts to categorize your feeds. For example, you can create an account named Mozilla News to put in it all your feeds related to Mozilla, and another one named Today Headlines to put in it all your feeds with general news.
• If you have several accounts, each one can have different settings. This way, you can choose, for example, different time intervals for each account (and, therefore, their feeds.)

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Organizing your feeds

The default operation mode when adding a feed to a Blogs & News Feeds account in &brandShortName; is to create a folder and a feed inside it. However, &brandShortName; allows you a great deal of flexibility. This section helps you to better organize your feeds:

Feeds versus folders

Blogs & News Feeds accounts are organized through two main concepts: feeds and folders.

• Feeds are sources for articles/posts. They provide the means to get new articles from blogs. You subscribe to feeds.
• Folders in Blogs & News Feeds accounts work pretty much like in any other account type. Folders store articles/posts you got through the feeds.

You use the Feed Subscriptions dialog to tell &brandShortName; which feed messages are downloaded in which folders. As feeds provide new articles and folders provide the store to put such articles, you will want to have them connected, usually linking a feed to a folder. However, keep in mind that removing a feed will not automatically delete the associated folder, nor will remove the articles/posts from the removed feed, since they are stored into the folder.

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Organizing folders in Blogs & News Feeds accounts

You can create, rename, move or copy folders in Blogs & News Feeds accounts just like with any other account type. See Creating a folder, Renaming a folder and Moving or copying a folder for more details.

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Downloading multiple feeds in a single folder

You may want to use a single folder to store articles/items coming from more than one feed. To do this, you just need to add additional feeds in that folder. Begin from the Mail window:

1. In the accounts pane, click your desired Blogs & News Feeds account to manage, or a feed inside it.
2. Open the File menu and choose Subscribe (or use any other of the available methods. to access to the Feed Subscriptions dialog box).
3. In the Feed Subscriptions dialog, click in the desired folder, then click the Add button. The Feed properties dialog will appear.
4. Type (or copy and paste) the feed URL in the Feed URL field.
5. Click OK to confirm the feed addition.

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Moving a feed to another folder

You can move a feed from a folder to another one using any of these methods:

• Drag & drop a feed while inside the Feed Subscriptions window.
• Edit the feed to change in what folder it downloads articles/items.

Note: Remember that moving the feed doesn't move existing articles from the folder in which they have been downloaded.

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