Socialite

View the Project on GitHub tmort/Socialite

Socialite v2

Because if you're selling your soul, you may as well do it asynchronously.

Socialite provides a very easy way to implement and activate a plethora of social sharing buttons — any time you wish. On document load, on article hover, on any event!

Author: David Bushell http://dbushell.com @dbushell

Contributor: Tom Morton http://twmorton.com @tmort

Copyright © 2013

Demo

Hover over the following social links to load them dynamically. Socialite can be triggered by page scrolling (lazy loading the social links as they are needed) or when the user hovers over an area on the page.

Using Socialite

Socialite works by asynchronously loading social networks required javascript files and only loading the Social Sharing buttons as the user needs them. For example, rather than loading all social networking buttons at once on a page, we can load them while the user scrolls.

Each button is loading by targeting its class. We also use a background image as a placeholder to display the button before it loads.

Create an element with the class socialite and a class like twitter-share to specify the social network and type of widget. Best practice is to provide an accessible fallback URL like the example below. Style it however you like, though avoid using overflow: hidden in CSS as it will crop overlays.

<a class="socialite twitter-share" href="http://twitter.com/share" data-url="http://socialitejs.com">
    Share on Twitter
</a>

Use data-* attributes to configure your button. These configurations directly correlate to the individual network implementations, so while Twitter uses data-url, Facebook uses data-href. Not ideal but I'd rather keep this script very small!

Supported Button Markup:

                    
<ul class="social-buttons cf">
    <li>
        <a href="http://twitter.com/share" class="socialite twitter-share" data-text="Socialite.js" data-url="http://socialitejs.com" data-count="vertical" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><span class="vhidden">Share on Twitter</span></a>
    </li>
    <li>
        <a href="https://plus.google.com/share?url=http://socialitejs.com" class="socialite googleplus-one" data-size="tall" data-href="http://socialitejs.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><span class="vhidden">Share on Google+</span></a>
    </li>
    <li>
        <a href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http://www.socialitejs.com&t=Socialite.js" class="socialite facebook-like" data-href="http://socialitejs.com" data-send="false" data-layout="box_count" data-width="60" data-show-faces="false" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><span class="vhidden">Share on Facebook</span></a>
    </li>
    <li>
        <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&url=http://socialitejs.com&title=Socialite.js" class="socialite linkedin-share" data-url="http://socialitejs.com" data-counter="top" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><span class="vhidden">Share on LinkedIn</span></a>
    </li>
    <li>
        <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&url=http://socialitejs.com&title=Socialite.js" class="socialite linkedin-share" data-url="http://socialitejs.com" data-counter="top" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><span class="vhidden">Share on LinkedIn</span></a>
    </li>
</ul>
                    
                

Supported widgets are currently:

Also available as extensions:

For all individual button configurations visit Twitter, Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Spotify. Important: don't include the scripts provided by these networks, Socialite does that for you! Include socialite.js right at the end of your document and activate with the options below.

Please note: you can easily edit socialite.js to remove the social networks you don't need.

Making it Work

Load

Socialite.load();

The main Socialite function. load will search the document for elements with the class socialite and magically transform them into sharing buttons (based on a network class and data-* attributes).

Always wait for at least the DOMContentLoaded event — $(document).ready(function() { }); with jQuery.

Socialite.load(context);

Be kind! Provide a scope to search within using context (a containing element) rather than the whole document.

Activate

Socialite.activate(element, 'widget');

activate replaces a single element (or an array of) with the specific social widget.

Process (optional)

Socialite.process();

Run process only once when the document has loaded to prepare all Socialite instances. This may be necessary to avoid conflicts when multiple or unsupported widgets exist on the page (e.g. Pinterest buttons). Note that process removes all fallback content for some widgets. This optional will be implemented more intelligently in future versions of Socialite.

Setup (optional)

Socialite.setup({ /* settings */ });

setup allows you to specify settings for each network such as localisation (see below for all options).

Settings

Facebook

Socialite.setup({
    facebook: {
        lang     : 'en_GB',
        appId    : 123456789,
        onlike   : function(url) { /* ... */ },
        onunlike : function(url) { /* ... */ },
        onsend   : function(url) { /* ... */ }
    }
});

See Facebook's documentation on Internationalization for supported language codes.

Twitter

Socialite.setup({
    twitter: {
        lang       : 'en',
        onclick    : function(e) { /* ... */ },
        ontweet    : function(e) { /* ... */ },
        onretweet  : function(e) { /* ... */ },
        onfavorite : function(e) { /* ... */ },
        onfollow   : function(e) { /* ... */ }
    }
});

See Twitter's documentation for support on Web Intents Javascript Events and supported Languages.

Twitter share buttons can override the global language setting with a data-lang attribute.

Google+

Socialite.setup({
    googleplus: {
        lang               : 'en-GB',
        onstartinteraction : function(el, e) { /* ... */ },
        onendinteraction   : function(el, e) { /* ... */ },
        callback           : function(el, e) { /* ... */ }
    }
});

See Google's documentation for support on Events and Languages.

Contribute

Send me feedback and testing issues!

The main core of Socialite is built for extensibility. It's basically a fancy script loader designed for social widgets. They can be stripped out easily if not used and new ones added:

Socialite.network('network', params);
Socialite.widget('network', 'widget', params);

With these two functions you can add extended support. See the source code for examples (more guides to come here). I'm always working on support and settings for more networks, check back frequently!

Changes from Version 1

Please be aware that class names used by Socialite have changed since version 1. All instances start with the class socialite, they gain the class socialite-instance once processed, and finally socialite-loaded once activated. Pinterest and Spotify extensions are no longer in the default build of socialite.js. See end of this README for full change log.

WordPress Plugin

Tom Morton @tmort has also created a WordPress plugin that packages WPSocialite and makes it a one step installation into your WordPress powered website. Download it from here: http://wordpress.org/plugins/wpsocialite/.

Change Log

2.0.3 - 11th June 2012

2.0.2 - 10th June 2012

2.0.1 - 9th June 2012