RSS Feeds

Real Simple Syndication - Do you often see websites with the little orange square with "RSS Feed" next to it? On the bottom of the right column of this Blog, you will see the link "Subscribe to Posts [Atom]. Ever wonder what they are? This link is a way to allow you to keep up to date on new information posted on the web site. To take advantage of these RSS Feeds, you have to have a Feed Reader on your computer to collect the feeds from the various websites. If you are running Windows Vista, the Internet Explorer in Vista has the Feed reader built in. There is even a Sidepanel Gadget that will display the headline of new posts to the websites.
If you are running Windows XP with Internet Explorer 7 or Outlook 2007, these programs have the feed reader built into them as well.
If you are running Windows XP with Internet Explorer 6, then you need to look for a Feed Reader to download and install onto your computer to take advantage of RSS Feeds. There are a number of programs available.
The Webmaster Tips and Fr. Kazimierz' Reflections blogs, that we are running in conjunction with the website, have RSS Feed options so you can subscribe to them and you can get notification when these blogs are updated. That way, you won't miss new information that is posted on either of these Blogs.

Happy Reading.

Problem Opening New Window

Problem: When you click on a link on a web page, the new page does not open. Instead, a yellow bar appears at the top of the page in your Internet Browser telling you that Microsoft, in it's infinite wisdom, has decided to protect you and not allow a "Pop-up" window to open.

Cause: Impolite web designers who create pop-up ads that are supposed to open up in extra windows either on top of or below the window you are currently viewing have forced Microsoft to add a new feature in Windows XP SP2 called a "Pop-up Blocker". This is supposed to prevent these advertising pop-ups from opening up on your screen. Unfortunately, if you have this protection level set to High, it will also prevent additional windows from opening on your screen even when you initiate this by clicking on a link on the current page. This can be very annoying when this happens frequently.

Solution: There are three different actions you can take to get around this problem:

1. Get in the habit of always holding down the "CTRL" whenever you click on a link to open a new page. This will tell Internet Explorer to allow this page to open over the current one.
   
2. If there are certain trusted websites that you want to deactivate this protection feature for, like the Polish Catholic Mission website (you can always trust us not to do anything impolite while you are on our website), you can tell Internet Explorer that this is a trusted site so it won't block additional windows from opening. You can do this by clicking on "Tools" in the Internet Explorer menu, and selecting "Pop-up Blocker" and clicking on "Pop-up Blocker Settings". Type the address of the site into the "Address of Web site to allow:" field and clicking "Add". The full address of the PCM site is: http://www.polishcatholicmission.org/. Click "Close" and you shouldn't have this problem anymore on this website.
   
3. Lower the blocking level of the Pop-up Blocker to a lower level, or turn it off completely (not recommended unless you don't mind the pop-up ads).

Learning to use the Security and privacy settings in Internet Explorer can help make your Internet browsing experience much more pleasant.