On 2014-11-03 17:42, Anne van Kesteren wrote:
https://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/Sharing/API has a sketch for what a very
minimal Sharing API could look like.
I have often pondered the same when seeing a "Share" button or icon on a
webpage.
Some solutions have a single icon that pops up a menu, while other sites
has a row of the most common social sites.
In retrospect however I realize that any Share API would be no different
than how people currently share or bookmark things.
A worthy goal would be to help developers de-clutter websites from all
those share icons we see today, so if this could be steered towards that
it would be great.
There are two ways to do this that I'd recommend.
A link element in the header, maybe call it <link rel="share"
href="http://example.com/article/12345/"; />
or <link rel="share" /> if the current url (or the canonical url link if
present) should be used, although I guess in a way rel="share" will
probably replace the need to use rel="canonical" in the long run.
Then browser devs can simply utilize that info in their own Share UI
(which presumably is tied into the accounts set up on the device/machine
in some way).
A browser UI could provide a nice looking and device friendly way to
add/edit/remove social services that have sharing capabilities (Google+,
Facebook, Twitter, Skype, etc.)
If the share link is missing this does not mean the page can not be
shared, in that case it should be treated as a page is normally treated
today, the share link is just a browser hint as to the ideal link to use
when sharing this page.
Also note that using the link element allows the possibility of using
"hreflang" to present multiple share links (one international aka
English and one in the language of the page), or use "media" to provide
multiple share links for different types of devices.
There already is a link rel="search " so a rel="share" just makes sense
IMO.
It certainly will get rid of the clutter of share icons and buttons on
websites (over time), those can be a pain to click on using touch
devices (without zooming first), a browser Share UI could easily be
hidden on the edge and make se of swipe left from edge or swipe right
from edge (or top/bottom etc.) or use gestures to open a Share UI.
Some of those share icons may fail to list the social network the user
prefer (like email for example) but if that is all setup in the browser
then the user can share it at one (or multiple) social services just the
way they like it.
Also note that "title" can be applied to such a share link as well, thus
providing a suggested title the browser can choose (or not) to use when
sharing it.
Any icons/logo is either taken from the icon/logo of the current page or
from the href linked page (and whatever icon/logo that may have).
Existing services like AddThis or ShareThis (two of the more popular
ones I believe?) should be able to access the link rel="share" params
via javascript (to access hreflang and media and title) so they will
still remain competitive solutions; I aløso believe there are browser
plugins for these two services as well and the browser can/could provide
the rel="share" link to those types of plugins.
Also note that there can be multiple link rel="share" and that if
allowed when speced that rel="share" could be allowed to be global, that
way the links to be shared could be inline in the document thus part of
the content and useable by the user which is always ideal.
Anyway, I'll shut up now before I veer way off topic here.
--
Roger "Rescator" Hågensen.
Freelancer - http://www.EmSai.net/
