Sharing via AddThis

A long time ago I decided to add some ‘social sharing’ into the blog; the how in this instance being more important than the why. I didn’t care for the layout of Blogger’s own set of share buttons so hacked an alternative, adding in the Google +1 button when it became available. Sometime (or was it immediately?) after the launch of their new social networking platform the +1 button was extended to “recommend on search, share on Google+”. Whilst this was kind of OK - platform first, then API - it twisted the metaphor; when, I wondered, would Google+ have a function dedicated to “Share”? It happened so quietly - back in April - I hardly noticed; the share buttons on YouTube had altered, specifically Google+ no longer referenced +1. This is much better; the lack of direct sharing must have further limited people’s use of Google's offering.

My first thought was to enter the HTML jungle representing this blog - in which there has been far too much messing around - and code up a new button. My second thought, which occurred shortly after escaping said jungle, was to look for something else. Something unobtrusive and easily configurable, I settled on AddThis. Using their “Install Blogger Widget” option places some HTML-generating JavaScript in a widget. Done this way it’s easy to remove - always reassuring - and still relatively easy to customise, of which there are a plethora of options.

It's early days, but so far I've only three gripes. Visually I'm not keen on the two-column pop-up menu showing the other bookmarking and sharing options, and I don’t really want to spend time overriding the styling. Having said that my two other concerns are addressed if I hide the menu header. The first of which is if I select one of the services the header changes to “Share successful!” irrespective of whether I have shared. The other is something that happens in Chrome (but not IE or Firefox) as a result of the following piece of AddThis code:

<a id="at15sptx" href="#" onclick="return _atw.clb()" onkeydown="if(!e){var e = window.event||event;}if(e.keyCode){_ate.maf.key=e.keyCode;}else{if(e.which){_ate.maf.key=e.which;}}if(_ate.maf.key==9){ addthis_close(); _ate.maf.sib.tabIndex=9001;_ate.maf.sib.focus();}else{alert(_ate.maf.key)} _ate.maf.key=null" tabindex="9000">X</a>

It took me a while to track down as I hadn’t noticed that I’d explicitly closed the menu, and then I assumed I’d left some code of my own hanging around; it is in truth the kind of thing I’d do in testing. Then I noticed this behaviour everywhere. For example, using the Chrome browser I tried this out on the official London2012 page detailing the Olympic opening ceremony: Hover over the “Share” icon, explicitly close the pop-up menu by clicking on “X”, then press a key, (almost) any key; I typed “A”. Well, it made me smile.

A touch of ordinary

A shop, a walk, exercise (either that or I have to stop eating), two good films later - Il Postino and Garage - and a sudden realisation that I can use Blogger to create a basic “online business card”, as various services such as flavors.me and about.me are sometimes described, or a home page. Curiosity (vanity?) persuaded me to buy a custom domain when setting up my blog; so I could create another and assign the “www” subdomain, and since it’s Blogger it would also (unlike Google Sites) be able to handle naked domains.

Specify the favicon, hide the navbar with a bit of CSS and hack/edit away at the Template HTML to hide almost everything else and I had a blank canvas to work with. The trickiest part was remembering my login credentials for changing the DNS settings - mine were buried away in Google Apps - then undo an existing mapping for “www”, change the CNAME and add some A records. The result is admittedly light on functionality and I only needed to cough up a measly $20 for a whole set of features, but where’s the fun in that?

Chrome yumminess

It says a lot about how much I like the Google Chrome browser that I can say ‘yumminess’ without too much embarrassment, also that I should spend a more-than-is-healthy-for-me amount of time salivating over the new Google Chrome Notebook. As a software developer I default to the position that a Chromebook is of no use to me, though I confess that, particularly with a VDI solution implemented for work, this will become less of a barrier. Besides which, I’m stubborn enough to believe that portable means secondary, and as an additional device it has an attraction.

Two applications that I already use with Google’s browser are Gmail and TweetDeck for Chrome; both use HTML5 notifications and both are preferable to their client application alternative. In moving to the browser they gained simple advantages that I’d never previously considered; integrated search for example. And I could learn to use Google Apps, though I admit in the past to having returned to Microsoft options rather than making the effort.

So where are we on this evolutionary path and is Google’s fundamentalist ‘everything in the cloud’ approach the right way? Or is Apple’s comparatively conservative ‘data in the iCloud’ more likely to succeed? And what gives with Microsoft’s Windows8 emphasis on HTML5 and Javascript? I digress; it’s the shiny objects that have my immediate interest, even though it’s hypothetical. I am on the outside looking in; iPads, Chromebooks, Snoozeberries, Everlasting Updates… such goodies are beyond my reach, and it's probably healthier that way.

There’s no place like 127.0.0.1

For the past fortnight I’ve been intermittently without a home to go to. Indeed home became so unreliable that yesterday I dropped any references and set about messing with the DNS, or to be more accurate trying to undo the mess that I created. There’s nothing more annoying than heading for home when the outcome is uncertain; and there’s nothing more anal than periodically clicking Home to check the result.

It’s only a temporary residence too. Google Sites has its purpose but mine was to build a website. I’m a little hazy as to why I wanted to do that but I’m sure given time I’ll come up with a reason. Not surprisingly, I have a random approach to establishing a web presence. I start blogging and only later grasp on the idea of addressing it with my own domain. And I’m determined to use a ‘blog’ sub-domain. And if you’ve got a ‘blog’ sub-domain then you need to have a ‘www’ sub-domain too. Don’t ask me why, you just do. Google Sites was an accident but it serves a purpose in acting as a placeholder. For a while my blog distracted me with a little HTML play, and then I remembered how I’d wanted to understand the various pieces.

Ah yes, maybe that was the reason. So now I look to the ‘Build your own website for people who ought to already know’ books and hope that I really can. Maybe email a few former colleagues for advice. Maybe I’ll use a few technologies along the way... and maybe I’ll even learn something.