FeedBurner is a really useful website that gives you the ability to promote your web feeds, a data format used by websites. Xomba already gives us our own personal RSS feed, which updates itself every time we post Xombytes, Xomblurbs or upload pictures.* If you haven't already made a FeedBurner account, I suggest you do so as it's GREAT for sharing your articles, blogs and website content without much effort at all!

One of the most useful and easiest to use functions on FeedBurner is the Headline Animator. These are the neat little animated boxes some users have under their comments. It displays the five most recent feeds uploaded by the user.** However, since Xomba has a new text editor (uploaded August 2009), the code that FeedBurner automatically generates for users does not work anymore. This is because the text editor only allows certain types of HTML coding. Same goes for websites like forums which sometimes only allow basic HTML when posting. Don't worry! There are two ways you can still apply the Headline Animator to your signature! (You can edit it in My Profile>Edit tab>Account>Under the Avatars)

* Make sure to change the name of the picture before uploading or else your Headline Animator will display something like '234yummy_cupcakes.jpg'. If you delete it, it will take a couple of minutes for it to stop displaying. You can delete an uploaded picture by going to My Posts.

** Currently, there is no way for you to control what displays on your Headline Animator other than your five most recent items. So be careful when uploading pictures on Xomba with the Upload Image button (not the Insert/Edit button).

The Beginning

First, you have to make your Headline Animator. It is under the Publicize Tab in your FeedBurner account. If you already have one, right under your Animator's image in the dropdown menu, choose Other (just gimme the code) and click the Next button. 

Part One: The Code (What the heck is all of this???) 

•  Uncheck "Include a "Grab this" link" (This just adds coding for people who wants a Headline Animator too but to keep this simple, I'm not going to include it)

   

• Now you should see something like this:

  <a target="_blank" href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/saffyxomba/~6/2"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/saffyxomba.2.gif" alt="SaffireYin's Xomba" style="border:0"></a>

   

• Confused? I would be too if I didn't know much about HTML! I'll break it apart for you.

   <a target="_blank" href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/saffyxomba/~6/2">

  <img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/saffyxomba.2.gif" alt="SaffireYin's Xomba" style="border:0"></a>

  The bolded parts are the two important links. They're all you need. If you want to avoid having to return to FeedBurner just to copy those links, I suggest you save them somewhere without the coding. FeedBurner always just gives you the whole code that you don't need so it's a hassle having to go back all the time when you want to put your Headline Animator somewhere.

  You can tell which one is the image link by looking at the end of the links. GIF is an image format, usually used for animated images. Other formats include JPG, JPEG, PNG, etc. Any link with these at the end means it's a picture. So how can you put this into your signature?

Part Two: Your Options (Awesome!)

• The BB Code Way
  There's a basic BB Code guide on Xomba that explains what it is and what you can use. It doesn't seem to apply for Xombytes and Xomblurbs though***. I guess it only works for comments, signatures and anywhere else that displays "More information about formatting options" under the text editor on Xomba. You only need to use the [url] and [img] BB codes for this to work. Copy and paste the code below and replace the O's with the regular link and the X's with the image link.

  [url=OOOOOOOOOOOOO][img]XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX[/img][/url]

  It should look something like this:

  [url=http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/saffyxomba/~6/1][img]http://feeds.feedburner.com/saffyxomba.1.gif[/img][/url]

  The image won't show in your Signature settings but it'll show in your comments so don't worry. Now you can put your Headline Animator anywhere that allows BB codes!!  =)

  ***Interesting note: After having issues submitting this byte, I found out BB Codes DO work but some of them don't work either. A bug?

• The Image Button Way

  One of the options in the (Xomba) text editor is the Insert/Edit Image button. Here you get slightly more options on what to do with your Headline Animator.

  1) On the Image Info tab under URL, copy and paste the image link. You should see your image appear in the Preview box now. (when you click somewhere else)

  2) On the Link tab, paste the regular link. Then click OK. You're done!! =D

   

• Extras You Can Do:

  You can now automatically change the width and height of your Animator if you wish to. However, it only stretches the image, which can make it blurry or unclear.

  Original:

  

  Bigger but Blurry:

  

  Small but Unclear:

  

  Whether you resize or not is up to you. Make sure the lock icon is locked so that when you change the height (or width), it automatically adjusts the width (or height) too. The clockwise arrow refreshes the image back to it's original size.

  You can also add a border and place the image in different places with the HSpace (Horizontal), VSpace (Vertical) or the Align dropdown menu. Play around with it and you'll see ;D!

   
    

And voilá! You have FeedBurner's Headline Animator in your signature now! Congrats!!! 

There's also the HTML way of using the code but I didn't include it since it doesn't work on Xomba. It's also not much different than the original code you get other than it's shorter so it'd be good for small character limits. I can add it too if anyone really wants it. I will also edit this later to include the links of my next posts regarding more information about the Image/Link button and more of what you can do with FeedBurner's functions.
 

I only learned about feeds, FeedBurner and Xomba in the past few days since I just joined so I'm sorry if there's any misinformation. I'd appreciate if anyone points them out so I can edit it to avoid any confusion. I hope this guide was easy to understand and useful for everyone. =) 

If you're considering to join Xomba, join now! (>")> We'll help you any way we can! <("<)