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RadSocialShare buttons: LinkedIn, RSS, Custom?

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Dan
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Dan asked on 17 Jan 2012, 11:15 PM
Hi there-- two (well, three) questions!

1) Right now, LinkedIn is included in the RadSocialShare control as a Styled Button, which means you get the 16x16 icon with the appropriate link. Will it soon be possible to use it as a Standard Button with the attached bubble, like the RadFacebookButton, RadTwitterButton and RadGoogleButton? You can find LinkedIn's share button builder here: http://developer.linkedin.com/plugins/share-button .

2) I know it's not technically meant for sharing, but would it be possible to include an RSS button in with the rest of the social buttons?

And I guess a related question that ties these two together is: would it be possible to insert arbitrary buttons by pasting in HTML/JS code, say, via something like this?: <telerik:RadSocialButton SocialNetType="Custom" /> 

Thanks!

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Jelle Spaan | RedMatters
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answered on 19 Jan 2012, 09:32 AM
Hi,

along with Dan, I was hoping to find a way to include a custom button. I'm living in te Netherlands, and one of the main social networks here is Hyves, which I would like to include...

I definitely would like the possibility to create custom buttons. Hope it's possible already, or very soon!

Thanks!
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Svetlina Anati
Telerik team
answered on 20 Jan 2012, 10:40 AM
Hello guys,

Straight to your questions:

1) I am glad to inform you that a standard, third-party LinkedIn button (with an ability to display counter) will be available in the upcoming Q1 major release which is scheduled for the middle of February.

2) RSS feed is not functionally related to social sharing and thus we prefer not to include such a feature since we want to stick to a clear design purposes. However, in case we receive more requests for that, we could consider implementing it.

3) As to the custom button you ask for, would you please provide more details what exactly you mean? The social share has code for dynamic rendering (to keep XHTML compliancy), hooking up client events, google analytics support which writes the particular network name, etc. All these features are implemented in different manner for different buttons and there is not one standard way to do so for all of them. As far as I understand, you want to have a custom button, for which you will provide everything - icon, HTML, CSS, javascript - if so, I do not see the point of adding this to the control. You could simply add the button next to the other ones - this will be easier to implement and will require the same or less amount of code.

In case I have not correctly understand your idea of a custom button, please provide more details on what exactly you meant and we will consider adding this functionality.

Regards,
Svetlina Anati
the Telerik team
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Dan
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answered on 20 Jan 2012, 10:39 PM
Hi Svetlina,

1) Wonderful! Looking forward to that functionality, since a lot of our core business is integrated with LinkedIn and we want to promote its use.

2) No problem really, I agree that it's not related but it was one of the requests we got so I figured I'd ask. I might go back and argue for putting it in a different place, to keep "share" and "follow" separate.

3) I guess I didn't really know specifically what I was asking for, apart from wanting a way to include different buttons. The point about creating the code separately right next to the other controls is well taken, and we might just do that for the LinkedIn standard button until the Q1 release is out. Along that line, we were thinking of having the following layout for the buttons: Facebook Standard Button, Twitter Standard Button, Google+ Standard Button, LinkedIn Standard Button, Send E-mail button, and then a Compact Button for the rest. Until the Q1 release is out, would you suggest we have two RadSocialShare controls—one for Facebook, Twitter, and Google+, another for the Send E-mail and Compact Buttons, and simply place the code for the LinkedIn button in between the two?

And regarding Menno's suggestion, it'd still be a great idea to be able to easily create Custom Styled Buttons. The share function on most social networks can be called by an HTTP GET request, such as: http://www.randomsocialnetwork.com/share?url=AwesomeURL&title=Awesome+web+site . A user could provide a modified version of this GET request with tags in place of the appropriate parameters, like so: http://www.randomsocialnetwork.com/share?url={0}&title={1} .  The end result could be a Custom Social Button with something like the following syntax:

<telerik:RadSocialButton SocialNetType="Custom" TitleToShare="Awesome web site"
     ToolTip="Share on RandomSocialNetwork" UrlToShare="http://www.awesomeURL.com/"
     RequestFormat="http://www.randomsocialnetwork.com/share?url={0}&title={1}"  />


Where {0} and {1} would resolve to escaped versions of UrlToShare and TitleToShare, respectively. Admittedly, it might not be the most effective way of adding custom buttons, but hopefully it illustrates a possible way of addressing Menno's concern.

Another solution, as you mentioned, would be to simply add the custom button ourselves next to the RadSocialShare control. I guess the problem with that would be the following: As I mentioned above, depending on the desired order of the buttons (i.e. Facebook, then Hyves, then Twitter, then CompactButton, etc), we may have to split the RadSocialShare control into two controls, one to the left of our home-brewed Hyves button and another to the right, as I described above with the LinkedIn button example. Without being able to fully integrate these custom social buttons into the RadSocialShare itself—including having them line up and be integrated with the RadSocialShare's Skin and its overall look-and-feel—we may be left wondering whether the overhead of splitting the control into two like that is really worth it, vs. simply abandoning the RadSocialShare control and coding the entire thing ourselves. I know I'd considered that option myself, but figured I'd check with you guys first to see what would be possible.

What do you think?
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Svetlina Anati
Telerik team
answered on 25 Jan 2012, 03:20 PM
Hello Dan,

I logged your suggestion and we will consider adding some sort of template button if we get more requests about this.

Meanwhile, you could easily achieve the look you need by using some CSS e.g as shown below:


<%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeFile="Default2.aspx.cs" Inherits="RadSocialShare_Improve_Default2" %>
 
<%@ Register Assembly="Telerik.Web.UI" Namespace="Telerik.Web.UI" TagPrefix="telerik" %>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<head runat="server">
    <title></title>
    <script src="http://platform.linkedin.com/in.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
    <style type="text/css">
        div.RadSocialShare
        {
            border: 0;
        }
        
        .myWrapper
        {
            font-size: 12px;
            font-family: "Segoe UI" , Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
            margin: 0;
            padding: 5px;
            border-radius: 3px;
            display: inline-block;
            *display: inline;
            zoom: 1;
            border: 1px solid black;
        }
    </style>
</head>
<body>
    <form id="form1" runat="server">
    <telerik:RadScriptManager ID="ScriptManager1" runat="server">
    </telerik:RadScriptManager>
    <br />
    <br />
    <br />
    <br />
    <br />
    <div class="myWrapper">
        <ul class="sshContent">
            <li class="sshListItem">
                <script type="IN/Share" data-onsuccess="RadSocialShare2linkedInHandler" data-showzero="true"
                    data-counter="right" data-url="http://www.telerik.com"></script>
            </li>
            <li class="sshListItem">
                <telerik:RadSocialShare ID="RadSocialShare1" runat="server" UrlToShare="http://www.telerik.com"
                    TitleToShare=".NET UI Controls, Reporting, Visual Studio Tools, Agile Project Management, Automated Testing, ASP.NET Web CMS by Telerik"
                    Width="300">
                    <MainButtons>
                        <telerik:RadFacebookButton ButtonType="FacebookLike" ButtonLayout="Standard" Width="100"
                            ShowFaces="false" />
                        <telerik:RadFacebookButton ButtonType="FacebookSend" />
                    </MainButtons>
                </telerik:RadSocialShare>
            </li>
        </ul>
    </div>
    </form>
</body>
</html>

Note, that sshContent and sshListItem are CSS classes used by RadSocialShare for the items - if you want you can use your own style.

Thank you once again for your suggestion, we highly appreciate it and in case we get more requests, we will either implement some built-in template or styling mechanism or a help article about that.

Kind regards,
Svetlina Anati
the Telerik team
If you want to get updates on new releases, tips and tricks and sneak peeks at our product labs directly from the developers working on the RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX, subscribe to their blog feed now
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Jay Mathis
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answered on 22 Mar 2012, 12:52 AM
I'd like to second the request for custom buttons.  I frequently get a request to add a Print button, even though it has nothing to do with social sharing... :(
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Bozhidar
Telerik team
answered on 22 Mar 2012, 02:47 PM
Hi,

You are right, it has nothing to do with RadSocialShare control. There is RadButton controls that provides an embedded  print button.

If you like to provide a print button with the SocialShare controls, I think it is out of the scope of the control. If we provide such a button then we could be asked to provide with that control whatever button that is not a social share related.

All the best,
Bozhidar
the Telerik team
If you want to get updates on new releases, tips and tricks and sneak peeks at our product labs directly from the developers working on the RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX, subscribe to their blog feed now.
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Dan
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Jelle Spaan | RedMatters
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Svetlina Anati
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Dan
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Jay Mathis
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Bozhidar
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