About eight months ago, Alex King released the first version of the Share This plugin, featuring his now famous Share Icon inspired by the now standard Feed Icon. Unfortunately, Alex sold both the plugin and icon a few months ago to the entity which now owns and operates ShareThis. While ShareThis claims that the icon is still free for all to use, the ShareThis has slowly been taking on a more commercial feel and the usage of the icon has begun to show some restrictions. The icon, which was previously conceived as a standard for all sharing services, is now offered with the strong recommendation that you use it with the services provided by ShareThis, and some organizations which have sought to adapt it to use with their services have received take-down requests from ShareThis.
Fortunately, The Open Share Icon was created to provide a freely usable and distributable icon for the rest of us, and to challenge the Share Icon as a potential standard for all sharing services. Due to ShareThis’ increasing commercial feel, I have decided to leave it behind for Add to Any, which provides buttons to easily share URLs or subscribe to feeds, and nothing more. The Open Share Icon has not been widely adopted yet, so I have modified two of Add to Any’s popular buttons (a practice strongly encouraged by Add to Any’s creator) by adding the Open Share Icon. Feel free to use them on your sites.
As a possible note of interest, these are the first buttons that I have created with Pixelmator. At first, I was hesitant to replace Photoshop with Pixelmator, but I can now say with confidence that Pixelmator does exactly what I need it to do for $590 and 1.9GB less than Photoshop.
4 responses
Hi James,
Superb job on the modifying the Share/Save buttons, and thanks a bunch for sharing the mod!
Since you essentially read my mind, I’d like to give you a heads up that we’re considering using the Open Share icon officially within the Share/Save buttons. Since the button does a bit more than simplify sharing (saving, namely), our inclination is to have it replace one of the service icons (Delicious, Google or Digg). Also, we’re still fond of our old blue plus logo. 😉
Thanks again, James! You rock.
Thanks, Pat!
I’m glad that you like the modifications! The Open Share Icon will go perfectly with Add to Any, and the official inclusion of the icon with a well-established service like Add to Any may help it overthrow the Share Icon as today’s standard for sharing services.
I’m looking forward to seeing how you integrate the Open Share Icon with your share/save buttons, and I’ll probably switch as soon as you make them available.
Thanks for providing such a straight-forward and reliable service, and for considering the official inclusion of the Open Share Icon. I think it will be a perfect match!
You should explicitly release the icon under the GPL — then it can’t later be sold to somebody who might lock it down.
That might encourage wider adoption…?
I can’t speak for those leading The Open Share Icon Project, but that does sound like a very good idea! As far as I can tell, they mention that the icon is “free from trademarks,” “free from commercial ownership,” and “free from brand ownership,” but I can’t find any mention of a specific license.
I’m sure that they would certainly consider licensing the icon if you mentioned the advantages on their discussion forum.