Is ShareThis 1.0 Better Than ShareThis 2.0?

Nov 10, 2007 by Matt | Posted in General 6 Comments

What do you think? Alex King just released the new version of the great ShareThis plugin, but I don’t like it as much. Here are my main reasons:

  • It’s a lot slower, as it uses JavaScript to load the collapsible DIV’s contents from ShareThis.com.
  • The default styling doesn’t look as good.

I’m still using the original plugin, and I don’t intend to stop.

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  • http://planetozh.com/ Ozh

    I really don’t like it either.

  • http://www.webmaster-source.com Matt

    Glad you agree.

    Maybe I shouldn’t have put “What’s the difference?” in the poll. Either people aren’t very observant or they haven’t heard of ShareThis.

  • http://sharethis.com Mike Blackwell

    Matt,

    I appreciated your blog post regarding the new ShareThis WordPress plugin. Allow me to clarify a couple things and give you some scoop.

    We completely agree that some will prefer the classic WordPress plugin. In fact, we have launched version 1.5 in the 1.x code tree which has some new features.

    Version 2.0 is javascript based and we will be diligent to keep the performance quick. The javascript approach provides some new benefits such as tracking, the configuring tool, sending features (where users can now save preferences and addresses) and the ability to make new features automatically available. We believe most will find the speed of version 2.0 to be acceptable given the new benefits but we’ll continue to provide the classic version for those who do not prefer the new features.

    Also, here’s the scoop… We’ve been hearing requests to provide more control to publishers and developers to allow change of styling in version 2.0 similar to the classic version and we are going to do this in the coming weeks. We’ll announce theses updates on our web site when available.

    Mike Blackwell (at ShareThis)

  • http://www.webmaster-source.com Matt

    Thank you for your reply. I definitely agree that “some will prefer the classic WordPress plugin.” I imagine that a lot will prefer ShareThis 1.0 (not to insult ShareThis.com or anything) as the WordPress crowd, like myself, tends to prefer to not outsource things to other servers.

    I also think that ShareThis 1.0/1.5 could use more of a difference in name than just a version number (which would limit the number of updates…wouldn’t it?). Something along the lines of “ShareThis Classic.”

  • http://sharethis.com Mike Blackwell

    Matt,

    Great idea… We’ll work on updating links and references to the reference to version 1.5 as ShareThis Classic.

    Mike

  • http://www.webmaster-source.com Matt

    Well, it looks like the Share This plugin is in good hands. :D