Lady Dragus they are actually images that I posted. They are animated gifs, like the images of Santa and "hugs" that SeptMorn and Heathern have in the signatures to their posts.

I made them up in Adobe Illustrator and animated them with Adobe ImageReady, then I uploaded them to my webspace and referenced the images in the forum posts.

There are simpler tools for making animated gifs available (the Adobe products are expensive, I use them for work) I think there is something called GifCreator or something available free or as shareware. You also need some software to create the art itself, something like the "paint" program included with Windows may work if you don't have anything fancier. PaintShopPro is a great program, I used to use it before getting Adobe Photoshop, it has most of the features of Photoshop at far less price. PaintShopPro may also be able to animate the images itself by now.

Finally you need a place to "host" the finished images. I have a web host I use for my website at <A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.idexter.com>http://www.idexter.com</A> but many internet providers give you some space as a part of your regular membership fee, you may have to "activate" it with them.

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Also should mention that I made the background color for the gifs match the background of the posts on the website, I got the color values by peeking at the source code for these pages. I prefer that to giving the gif a "transparent" background because it gives a cleaner look around the edges of the letters. The disadvantage is that the image won't work as well if used on a different color background.