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Put an RSS Feed Reader On Your Web Site With Grazr

This one is for all the folks at the APRA conference who were looking for an easy RSS feed reader, and for anyone who wants a quick way to review RSS feeds and put them on their Web site.

Grazr, at http://grazr.com/, is a Javascript-based RSS feed reader that you embed within your site — it shows up in a little window. Extremely nifty, but still in alpha (what’s up with reviewing all the Alpha resources?)

Here’s how it works: you go to the site and choose Get Grazr for Your Page. You’re taken to a configuration page that lets you specify the width and length of the embedded box (an example box changes as you experiment with widths and lengths), the feed you want to display, and font and text style. (In addition to RSS feeds Grazr can display OPML files, which are sets of RSS feeds.) When you’re done specifying what you want your Grazr box to look like.

Here’s a Grazr that displays the feed for Librarian.net. If you have JavaScript disabled on your browser you’re not going to see this.

grazr

Click on any item within that feed and Grazr will display the entry for that item. Note there are pointers to additional RSS feeds (for comments) and many external links.

If you have a feed that you want to make easily browsable on your site, or your run an institution/corporation Web site and you want to expose your readers to a series of feeds thanks to the wonders of OPML, this is a very handy tool. Easy to set up, doesn’t require registration, and takes up just a little real estate on your pages. For development and details check out the Grazr blog.

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