ShareThis plugin

Lately I've been wishing every site had either an "Add this" or "Share This" button on it - so I could quickly send a link via email, or twitter it, or add it to facebook, or send to this blog.

Finally, sick of wishing, I decided to look for a bookmarklet that would do the same thing.

ShareThis offers a plugin - actually different plugins for Firefox and Internet Explorer and a bookmarklet for Safari. Depending on which browser I was using I was given different options when I visited their site.

The plugin download in FF didn't seem to work from the site, but I found it via the FF 'get add ons' functionality. It does what I want and I was able to customise it to show the sharing options that I wanted without having to sign up for a ShareThis account.

I then decided to sort out Internet Explorer (being a multi-browser type of person). I was not expecting that there would be a plugin, but I thought a bookmarklet might be on offer, or failing that I could possibly create one based on the Connotea bookmarklet I already use.

ShareThis has a plugin for IE. But I don't like it. It looks like this...

No options ready to go, and no option to customise. One assumes that a ShareThis account is required to make this useful. If anyone can give me a clue about this, please leave a comment.

Then on to Safari to see what was on offer. No plugin, just a bookmarklet - which was really all I needed in the first place. I used this one to set up a bookmarklet in IE by first adding a favourite (to any old page) and then adjusting its properties by pasting in the code from the Safari bookmarklet.

The bookmarklet works like this.

So, now I'm all set to share useful links more efficiently - I just wish there were a few key people at MPOW that I knew were following on Twitter or Yammer.

Next on my wishlist -- Add This and Share This include Connotea as one of their options.