#statingTheObvious
I’ve been observing a trend lately, and the geek in me is not very fond of it. A lot of people who share links online, are doing it wrong. We have a (natural) tendency to just click and paste the link we want to share into the box which says “Share”. What some of us completely ignore is that Google provides a specific button to share a hyperlink.
Even Facebook had this system in place for sharing links, but they removed it a few months back. I don’t want Google to go in the same direction.
Of course you can say what difference does it make? Well, it is not pleasing to the eye. Let me show you an example:
The post on the top is definitely more pleasing to the eye than the second one. You have to agree!
Of course I can’t force anyone to do this, but it would be nice if we all follow the same protocol (which is in place because it is good).
Writing the clichéd, the definition of ‘good’ is definitely subjective. But the supporters of the latter might, in their defense, say that it gives the user to open the link in the same window or allow them to open the link in the new tab and don’t immediately switch to it. Of course, these points might be refuted and someone might say that beauty comes before functionality or other similar argument but you get the point.
The very reason you have called it a protocol illustrates why making a fixed choice in this scenario isn’t advisable and it is upto the users and their followers to adopt a certain practice.
“But the supporters of the latter might, in their defense, say that it gives the user to open the link in the same window or allow them to open the link in the new tab and don’t immediately switch to it. ” …
I don’t see how the former prevents you from doing that.
And of course, it is up to users to share the way they want. I just wanted to bring this to the notice of people who weren’t aware.
What Harshit says makes sense in case of videos. You don’t want embedded videos all the time. Otherwise it is okay, I think.
You can always click on the title to open the videos and links in a separate tab. That’s the whole point!
No, but often people get rid of that title. But yes, if they stick to the share button that is provided, I guess the title will always come, for any link.
precisely!
One more thing. Sometime, I want to embed a picture and have a link to go with it. This dunce won’t let me do it. So, I have to end up embedding the pic and then either 1. Paste link 2. Paste a snippet of the link myself
Yes, but that is a very rare use case. Mostly the pics come with the link as thumbnails. I faced the same problem today; and since I was reluctant to just paste the link, I Googled and found out how to associate thumbnails to my WordPress posts
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Yes, but that’s not the point. The point is that it’s a pointless thing to not let your users do it.