About Those Buttons
| Friday, April 28th, 2006 | --jr |
Somewhat site related, but also a Cool Thing. You've probably noticed those little blue icon'd links sprinkled about the page, like that set of four next to this article. If you haven't yet clicked on them, I'm betting you're probably wondering what the heck they are.
They're yet another freebie we offer. This one is from the Social Media group. Add a few lines of javascript to your site and posts and you get them for free.
The tool is fairly easy to add in and customize, just be aware that there's two types of widgets, a simple link (like I've got here) and a "button". The examples swap back and forth between the two, so it's a good idea to actually read what they're doing rather than straight cut and paste at one in the morning. (Me? Do that? I'm shocked!)
So what all do they do?
Well, naturally, they're mostly wired up to Yahoo! Services, but here's the rundown:
 |
Add this site's RSS to your My Yahoo! page |
 |
Get an alert (via Mail, Yahoo! Messenger, SMS, etc.) whenever new stuff shows up here |
 |
Add a link to del.icio.us |
 |
Save this to My Web2.0 |
 |
Email a link to this post |
 |
Blog about this post on Y!360 |
 |
Print this post |
I'm guessing that last one is for folks who can't figure out how to hit [Ctrl]-P[Enter] or something.
There are a few things that I don't like about these widgets. I kinda wish that they worked with more than just our stuff, I wish the icons were a tad easier to read, and I wish that the links defaulted to say what they do. I added the "title" attribute so that folks can hover over them and get more info. Still, until I get around to hacking them up to do that sort of thing, they're damn easy to slap onto the page.
What do you think of them?
April 28th, 2006 at 5:59 pm
I wish more people knew what to do with them. It’s cool to have a button to use to send something directly to MyWeb, but so relatively few people understand the benefit of doing that that I feel like it’s almost pointless. The technology available for better using and organizing the web for yourself has grown by leaps and bounds, but I feel that we’re at a point where we’re waiting for the audience to catch up to the technology. I also would love it if you would turn those into Wordpress widgets. The new widget functionality that Wordpress offers makes operating a blog even easier than it was before, but there is still a dearth of worthwhile plugins out there.
I think Yahoo! really needs to embark on an outreach program to help its customers understand the full potential offered by its tools (though I wonder sometimes whether the employees actually get it–why is Y360 in its own little world out there?). This website is a great start, but maybe the entries from this website would also make a great addition to the front page? A little Y!Coolthing box right there where everyone who traffics the site can see it.
April 29th, 2006 at 10:37 am
Hi Earnest,
Yeah, actually, that’s been kicked around for a while (and yes, it’s one of the reasons we’ve started up this blog. It’s all part of our secret plot!)
The funny thing is that there are definitely two camps that are constantly fighting about what goes on the Front Page, ok, three really.
One wants absolutely nothing other than a search box and maybe a few popular links. Granted, they’ve already got a page like that, but they want it to be the main page. The other camp wants something more like My Yahoo! where you can customize everything. Again, it’s funny, because they’ve already got that (Psst! There’s a LOT of cool stuff coming out for My. They’re going to be doing a heck of a redesign). And folks could add our feed or some official one to that.
The third camp? They want ads. Lots and lots of ads. We try not to hurt them.
Maybe I ought to create a Widget for folks.
I guess that’s the problem with choices.
Thanks for the vote of confidence!
May 16th, 2006 at 4:36 pm
[...] 3. It’s painfully easy to use. Probably explains why it’s all over. Seriously, implementing MyWeb2 links are a piece of cake, and if you want your cake delivered to you on a silver platter, you can use things like the Publication Tools to do that for you too. Honest, getting the links out is as easy as putting them in. Heck, if you don’t like using the default Javascript based badge, you can get an RSS feed of the bookmarks and manage things yourself, like I did with my personal blog. [...]