Some RSS feed items may have files attached to them, also known as enclosures. These are most commonly used for podcasting although they are by no means restricted to only this. Enclosures can be used to distribute any kind of file e.g. new versions of software, updated Office documents or perhaps audio segments that are part of an online language lesson.
Unlike email attachments, enclosures are not transmitted together with the feed item. Instead, only a link to the file is included and if you want to open that file to read or listen or watch it, you must first download it. Awasu can be configured to either automatically download enclosures when they are received or if you want to save bandwidth, simply let you know that a feed item has a related file and you can selectively choose which ones to download.
Enclosures are a feature of RSS and are not specifically supported by Atom. However, Awasu has been designed to handle enclosures in both RSS and Atom. To reflect this, Awasu uses a slightly different terminology. Feed items, whether they be from an RSS or Atom feed, can have one or more related links that point to an external file that is associated with that item. Awasu can be configured to either automatically download these related files or just let you know about them so that you can decide for yourself whether or not to download them.
Most of the settings relating to automatically downloading files can be found in the Enclosures page of the Program Options. Channels can also be individually configured from the Channel page of their Channel Properties dialog.
If feed items have any related links, they will be shown in the channel summaries. If the files have already been downloaded, they will be shown with a small icon that you can click on to open the file directly from your hard disk. Otherwise, you will see them as a normal link that you can click on to download them from the Internet.
You can also manage all your enclosures from the Downloaded Files window.