RSS and AJAX Simple News Reader
XML.com has a good article on building a simple RSS News Reader using AJAX.
The article steps through each aspect of building a reader with in depth explanations and also has the source code available to be downloaded.
Why are we using Ajax to parse our RSS? By using Ajax, we are passing over the work of processing the RSS XML file to the web browser, thus reducing server load. Also, Ajax allows the user to have a more seamless web experience, because we are able to fetch the entire RSS XML file from the server without having to refresh the page. Lastly, Ajax is designed to handle XML files, so it’s able to parse RSS in a simple and elegant way.SOURCE : RSS and AJAX: A Simple News Reader