SubscribeFeedBurner recently released FeedFlare Phase 2. FeedFlares are links that allow blog readers to, in short, do stuff with blog posts, such as email the post to others or find Technorati links for that post. Phase 1 allowed FeedFlare links on XML feeds, and now Phase 2 allows FeedFlare links on blog posts themselves.
At first I put the FeedFlares at the bottom of my post and got all excited. “Wow, that’s awesome.” Then I wanted to tinker with it. I didn’t like those bullet points between the links and wanted to replace them with pipes, ala WordPress style.
However, the FeedFlare code that I’m supposed to put in my blog template is JavaScript, so I can’t customize the HTML directly. Hmm… that means “some CSS modification required.” Well, that’s okey-dokey with me, but this looks like CSS3 modification required, which I am quite certain will not work with Internet Explorer. Though Mozilla Firefox is superior in my opinion, Internet Explorer is what most people use. In addition, the FeedFlares are wrapped around a <p> tag, which will not be ideal for some cases in which I want to use the FeedFlares.
I finally got fed up with FeedFlare and made my own links. 
Things like “email this post” or “add to del.icio.us” are easy to do. Check my links out at the bottom of this post (assuming you’re reading this post directly at the site). And I recommend you also avoid FeedFlare unless you’re happy with how it looks, you’re willing to use some CSS3, or if HTML to you stands for “Hard To Me, it Looks.”
John Zeratsky responded on 29 Jan 2006 at 3:02 pm #
Thanks for your comments, John. I’d like to chime in here on a couple of the things you mentioned…
I definitely feel your Javascript pain — it’s just not as flexible or transparent as good ol’ HTML. We decided to go with Javascript so we could:
a) make enhancements and improvements to the code we are delivering, and
b) never force you to edit your template more than once.
With a Javascript include, you can go back to FeedBurner.com at any time and change your FeedFlare settings — we’ll instantly update the code that gets sent to your web site.
As for CSS, trust me — no CSS3 is required. You might have to get a little inventive, but you can do pretty much anything you want with basic (and well-supported) CSS 1 and 2.
Want to replace the bullets? Hide them, then place a background image as your separator. Want to list the links vertically? Set display:block on the <a> elements. Don’t like the <p>? It’s a block-level element just like <div> and you can do whatever you like with it.
We tried to balance our publishers’ desire to customize FeedFlare’s look with our desire to make it easy and to make it work “out of the box” for our publishers. I think we’ve done a good job of that, but we’re always open to feedback. Thank you for yours!
John Lamansky responded on 29 Jan 2006 at 9:01 pm #
Thanks John Z. For my desired feature set, I chose to use HTML rather than FeedFlare because I figured HTML would be much easier than creating a universally-compatible CSS customization solution for FeedFlare. I still do think custom HTML is better for simple links like “email this post” or “add to del.icio.us.” But thanks to your explanations and tips, I’ll probably consider utilizing FeedFlare again if I want to incorporate features that I cannot easily create myself, such as displaying the number of incoming Technorati links.
Thanks for all your work with FeedBurner! It’s a great service.
John Lamansky » Blog Archive » Blogosphere Trend: Customer Service Comments responded on 20 Jul 2006 at 9:47 pm #
[...] It seems that it’s becoming more and more common for company representatives to post comments on blog posts related to that company or its products. For example, so far on this blog I’ve had comments from FeedBurner, Dell, and Microsoft employees, plus a comment from the CEO of FeedBlitz. [...]