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I decided recently that I wanted to use a social bookmarking plug-in* on this blog. The choice came down to one of two: Add To Any or Sociable.

After a day of fiddling with both, I finally opted for Sociable. Both plug-ins are very good, and each has things it does better than the other. The reasons I decided on Sociable vs. Add To Any:

• Add To Any uses a pop-up layer to display some top bookmarking sites, then an additional click to select all. Sociable allows you to select which bookmarking sites you want to display as 16×16-pixel icons. I figure it’s enough to show just the most popular, rather than virtually every bookmarking site.
• Sociable requires less space to accomplish the same basic tasks.
• Add To Any requires JavaScript to work; Sociable doesn’t require it for most functions.
• Sociable looks prettier on my pages. The Add To Any icon didn’t fit well on my page; it does allow you to make your own icon, but I didn’t want to bother with that, especially when, again, Sociable’s icons all work on their own, right on the page.
• Add To Any doesn’t easily allow you to rearrange icons or add / remove certain links / services; Sociable makes selecting the order of icons (and which to use) quite easy.

That said, Add To Any does have some strengths over Sociable:

• Add To Any’s code is a bit cleaner; but again, we’ll soon discuss how to fix Sociable’s faults.
• Sociable requires a knowledge of CSS to customize; Add To Any allows n00bs to easily change colors and certain display settings.
• That Add To Any allows users to select virtually any bookmarking site, rather than a list the blogger determines, may be considered a strength by others.

So even though I opted for Sociable, I had to clean up some problems, such as display problems due to my theme; the alignment of the icons; and incomplete information for certain icons.

Continue reading ‘Fixing Various Issues With The Sociable Plug-In For WordPress’ »

No Tony Kornheiser on Monday Night Football, thanks to hernia surgery. Just Ron Jaworski and Mike Tirico, talking about the game itself, focusing on pertinent matters, providing actual insight and calling what, so far, has been a pretty good football game.

If only there was such a thing as season-ending hernia surgery for TV commentators.

Probably the best we can hope for is a nationwide outpouring of people, shouting with joy from the rooftops, that Tony Kornheiser = good football broadcast.

But if ESPN won’t respond to overwhelming criticism of Kornheiser, will it respond to overwhelming support of his booth partners when they are freed of his inanities?

I doubt it. But we can always hope.