6 ms·

What about using rel="share-url" to expose sharing intents?

88 points by edent 1y ago

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
nashashmi 1y ago
I was thinking A button can also be an alternative with all data sent as post, but apparently the button attributes don’t include any ability to specify form values. This has to be done via JS or via additional tags (which is still an option).
geocar 1y ago
One thing I really don't like about it is the implication that the url and the share-button could refer to different things. I feel like browser vendors probably care about knowing whether users use the share button or copy/paste the URL, but hypothetically they know already and I don't feel like most (any?) websites need that information -- it might correlate to a sophistication-level of the user and be used for targeting by scammers, and that could be bad. For me, I use history.replaceState to change the url after I've got my campaign tracking to the share link, this way the browser's built-in share button does all the work for me. I can detect trivial-reload by checking the cookie I dropped when the page came in, so I don't mis-attribute shares. It is a shame I cannot do this so easily without JavaScript, but I'm sure I can actually buy non-JavaScript users from Google (and other ad platforms) so I'm not sure it's worth worrying about.
chrismorgan 1y ago
There’s already a better spec from 2016, which has even been shipping in the Chromium family since 2019 (Android) or 2021 (desktop): https://w3c.github.io/web-share-target/ https://w3c.github.io/web-share-target/ https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Progressive_web_apps/Manifest/Reference/share_target https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Progressive_web... Use that, and the browser/native platform integration is already there, and ShareOpenly becomes more of stopgap measure. The only real problem is that you can’t feature-detect share_target support—so you can’t detect if the user is able to add a web app to the user agent’s share targets. As for ShareOpenly using these things, see https://shareopenly.org/share/?url=https://example.com https://shareopenly.org/share/?url=https://example.com, and it requires the user to paste a value in once, and then by the looks of it it will remember that site via a cookie. Not great, but I guess it works. But I’m sceptical anyone will really use it.
- quectophoton 1y ago
  > The only real problem is that you can’t feature-detect share_target support I didn't know this existed, so the first thing I did is check the caniuse website, and yeah not even they have info about the Web Share Target API[1][2]. As of writing this comment, they only have info about the Web Share API[3]. [1]: https://github.com/Fyrd/caniuse/issues/4670 https://github.com/Fyrd/caniuse/issues/4670 [2]: https://github.com/Fyrd/caniuse/issues/4906 https://github.com/Fyrd/caniuse/issues/4906 [3]: https://caniuse.com/web-share https://caniuse.com/web-share
  - troupo 1y ago
    Because as with many, many, many APIs that Chrome ships it's not a spec: - there's a giant banner on the left saying "unofficial" - The "Status of this document" section states the following: --- start quote --- This document is a draft of a potential specification. It has no official standing of any kind and does not represent the support or consensus of any standards organization. --- end quote --- But just because it was shipped in Chrome and has some napkin scribbles resembling an official spec, people will both claim it's a spec and expect everyone to implement it.
  - chrismorgan 1y ago
    Links on support: https://github.com/mdn/browser-compat-data/blob/main/manifests/webapp/share_target.json https://github.com/mdn/browser-compat-data/blob/main/manifes... (data integrated into the MDN page I linked) Chromium: https://chromestatus.com/feature/5662315307335680 https://chromestatus.com/feature/5662315307335680, implemented on Android from M71 and desktop from M89. WebKit: standards position is neutral <https://github.com/WebKit/standards-positions/issues/11 https://github.com/WebKit/standards-positions/issues/11>, and https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=194593 https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=194593 shows plenty of developer interest but doesn’t look to have been touched by Apple. Firefox: standards position is positive <https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/#web-share-target https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/#web-share-tar...>, but https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1476515 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1476515 has languished.
- 1y ago
uberman 1y ago
I don't care for the dash myself. I would have chosen something more like rel="shareable"
cxr 1y ago
Only tangentially related to the main subject, but the post ends with: > Extensions to the predefined set of link types may be registered on the microformats page for existing rel values. Please don't. WHATWG's tendency to self-anoint and all its idiosyncrasies notwithstanding, the IANA maintains the link relation registry[1]. Use the procedure prescribed in the RFCs. 1. <https://www.iana.org/assignments/link-relations/link-relations.xml https://www.iana.org/assignments/link-relations/link-relatio...>
rs186 1y ago
The article is proposing a technical solution to a business problem. I have no doubt this proposal or any other similar proposal would work well in the 90s or early 2000s. Let's go one step further and let browsers work with all those third party website and figure all the details for sharing, and websites never embed anything. But you see, that's not the problem. These share buttons are often trojans on websites. Facebook tracks you via those share buttons even if you have never had a Facebook account. And people come up with various solutions to tackle that -- adblockers just block network traffic, while a small amount of website owners create a separate switch which you can toggle and then share with Facebook. Isn't all of that stupid? I don't see why Facebook, Instagram will be eager to opt in to this solution and make the experience good.
- defraudbah 1y ago
  exactly my thought, links work fine as they are, my biggest problem with them is 9 times of 10 I don't know where they lead. Fixing one "share" use case isn't solving a misuse
- johannes1234321 1y ago
  Yeah, for those branded buttons on websites this isn't an alternative. They want all their JavaScript for collect information on the user, even if they don't press the button. I believe this is to play with (mobile) browser's share button, while even there I don't get how this is supposed to work. First: How does this figure out where I want to share to? And then: Would it have to load the shared-to page first, parse it to see if there is such a Tag and then interpret it? Maybe I am missing something.
biggestfan 1y ago
Does anyone even use share buttons? I always just copy the link, and it seems that anyone I see sharing things does the same. It feels more like a way for the social media companies to advertise/track, and those sites have been sending less and less traffic for years, so I wonder why every site still has them.
- hombre_fatal 1y ago
  The TFA is about how to craft a "Share on {ExternalSite}" URL, not a "Share this page" button.
- 0x00000000 1y ago
  tiktok share links also dox you. they have a banner with the name and profile picture of the person that shared it
  - troupo 1y ago
    They also track your friends and acquaintances through shares. Even if you don't give them access to contacts, and don't even use TikTok beyond scrolling through videos, they will start suggesting people who have seen your shares as your friends.
    - pinoy420 1y ago
      [dead]
  - qingcharles 1y ago
    Facebook's too.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- hahn-kev 1y ago
  Yeah I don't know if I've ever used them. Maybe once or twice ever. For me the main problem is UX. Sharing from my platform (copy url on computer, share button on android) is always in the same place. But the share button built in is never in the same place across different websites, how could it be?
blahgeek 1y ago
Does this mean that, when the user clicks a "share to social.network" button in random.com, the browser would first request the full html page of social.network (in the background) only to parse the rel="share-url" link? Seems a bad design.
- qingcharles 1y ago
  That's how I'm reading it? It's a bit clunky, but sometimes you have to be pragmatic :(
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
kemayo 1y ago
Looking at ShareOpenly, I think this is basically a reaction to "Mastodon instances make social sharing complicated from the web". A "share to Mastodon" button is impossible, and a button for every Mastodon instance in existence is impractical. Thus a "fuck it, I guess just put in a URL and we'll work out how to send something to it" solution. Speaking as someone who never ever uses a share button I think this is misguided, we should just remove that entire class of widget from the web, and people who want to share things can copy-paste the URL into their platforms of choice.
- tegiddrone 1y ago
  I agree. Except we aren't there with web literacy and having that integrated UX is significant.
  - kemayo 1y ago
    I think the sort of person who would paste/type the URL for another social service into the freeform "or some other service" input on ShareOpenly is exactly the sort of person who has that web literacy, though. Which I guess doesn't support my "delete them all!" desire, but rather sadly reinforces keeping the status quo.
procaryote 1y ago
Exposing the sharing intent is a problem, not a goal. Sharing a link is easy. That's why URLs were invented. Exposing the sharing intent is only beneficial to companies that want to track you. Sure, pressing "share on facebook" might be slightly lower friction than copy-pasting the link, but if the sharing isn't worth that friction, perhaps don't?
hombre_fatal 1y ago
So, it's a way to tell other applications how they would craft a URL on your site such that they can prefill a form on your site? A meta tag in the html of your webpages seems like the wrong place for that info since it's not something that changes per page unlike the OpenGraph/TwitterCard meta tags that tell third-party apps how to generate a preview of the page. Surely a better place would be example.com/.well-known/share-url.
foxfired 1y ago
This is what I currently use on my blog and it works particularly well: navigator.share({ title: "hello", text: "World", url: window.location.href }); Plus if the page has images, the browser will automatically use it.
- jeroenhd 1y ago
  That will work for sharing (except on Firefox), but only Chromium support actually receiving these share events, which is half the spec.

88 points by edent 1y ago

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

I was thinking A button can also be an alternative with all data sent as post, but apparently the button attributes don’t include any ability to specify form values. This has to be done via JS or via additional tags (which is still an option).

geocar 1y ago

One thing I really don't like about it is the implication that the url and the share-button could refer to different things. I feel like browser vendors probably care about knowing whether users use the share button or copy/paste the URL, but hypothetically they know already and I don't feel like most (any?) websites need that information -- it might correlate to a sophistication-level of the user and be used for targeting by scammers, and that could be bad. For me, I use history.replaceState to change the url after I've got my campaign tracking to the share link, this way the browser's built-in share button does all the work for me. I can detect trivial-reload by checking the cookie I dropped when the page came in, so I don't mis-attribute shares. It is a shame I cannot do this so easily without JavaScript, but I'm sure I can actually buy non-JavaScript users from Google (and other ad platforms) so I'm not sure it's worth worrying about.

chrismorgan 1y ago

There’s already a better spec from 2016, which has even been shipping in the Chromium family since 2019 (Android) or 2021 (desktop): https://w3c.github.io/web-share-target/ https://w3c.github.io/web-share-target/ https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Progressive_web_apps/Manifest/Reference/share_target https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Progressive_web... Use that, and the browser/native platform integration is already there, and ShareOpenly becomes more of stopgap measure. The only real problem is that you can’t feature-detect share_target support—so you can’t detect if the user is able to add a web app to the user agent’s share targets. As for ShareOpenly using these things, see https://shareopenly.org/share/?url=https://example.com https://shareopenly.org/share/?url=https://example.com, and it requires the user to paste a value in once, and then by the looks of it it will remember that site via a cookie. Not great, but I guess it works. But I’m sceptical anyone will really use it.

quectophoton 1y ago
> The only real problem is that you can’t feature-detect share_target support I didn't know this existed, so the first thing I did is check the caniuse website, and yeah not even they have info about the Web Share Target API[1][2]. As of writing this comment, they only have info about the Web Share API[3]. [1]: https://github.com/Fyrd/caniuse/issues/4670 https://github.com/Fyrd/caniuse/issues/4670 [2]: https://github.com/Fyrd/caniuse/issues/4906 https://github.com/Fyrd/caniuse/issues/4906 [3]: https://caniuse.com/web-share https://caniuse.com/web-share
- troupo 1y ago
  Because as with many, many, many APIs that Chrome ships it's not a spec: - there's a giant banner on the left saying "unofficial" - The "Status of this document" section states the following: --- start quote --- This document is a draft of a potential specification. It has no official standing of any kind and does not represent the support or consensus of any standards organization. --- end quote --- But just because it was shipped in Chrome and has some napkin scribbles resembling an official spec, people will both claim it's a spec and expect everyone to implement it.
- chrismorgan 1y ago
  Links on support: https://github.com/mdn/browser-compat-data/blob/main/manifests/webapp/share_target.json https://github.com/mdn/browser-compat-data/blob/main/manifes... (data integrated into the MDN page I linked) Chromium: https://chromestatus.com/feature/5662315307335680 https://chromestatus.com/feature/5662315307335680, implemented on Android from M71 and desktop from M89. WebKit: standards position is neutral <https://github.com/WebKit/standards-positions/issues/11 https://github.com/WebKit/standards-positions/issues/11>, and https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=194593 https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=194593 shows plenty of developer interest but doesn’t look to have been touched by Apple. Firefox: standards position is positive <https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/#web-share-target https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/#web-share-tar...>, but https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1476515 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1476515 has languished.
1y ago

uberman 1y ago

I don't care for the dash myself. I would have chosen something more like rel="shareable"

cxr 1y ago

Only tangentially related to the main subject, but the post ends with: > Extensions to the predefined set of link types may be registered on the microformats page for existing rel values. Please don't. WHATWG's tendency to self-anoint and all its idiosyncrasies notwithstanding, the IANA maintains the link relation registry[1]. Use the procedure prescribed in the RFCs. 1. <https://www.iana.org/assignments/link-relations/link-relations.xml https://www.iana.org/assignments/link-relations/link-relatio...>

rs186 1y ago

The article is proposing a technical solution to a business problem. I have no doubt this proposal or any other similar proposal would work well in the 90s or early 2000s. Let's go one step further and let browsers work with all those third party website and figure all the details for sharing, and websites never embed anything. But you see, that's not the problem. These share buttons are often trojans on websites. Facebook tracks you via those share buttons even if you have never had a Facebook account. And people come up with various solutions to tackle that -- adblockers just block network traffic, while a small amount of website owners create a separate switch which you can toggle and then share with Facebook. Isn't all of that stupid? I don't see why Facebook, Instagram will be eager to opt in to this solution and make the experience good.

defraudbah 1y ago
exactly my thought, links work fine as they are, my biggest problem with them is 9 times of 10 I don't know where they lead. Fixing one "share" use case isn't solving a misuse
johannes1234321 1y ago
Yeah, for those branded buttons on websites this isn't an alternative. They want all their JavaScript for collect information on the user, even if they don't press the button. I believe this is to play with (mobile) browser's share button, while even there I don't get how this is supposed to work. First: How does this figure out where I want to share to? And then: Would it have to load the shared-to page first, parse it to see if there is such a Tag and then interpret it? Maybe I am missing something.

biggestfan 1y ago

Does anyone even use share buttons? I always just copy the link, and it seems that anyone I see sharing things does the same. It feels more like a way for the social media companies to advertise/track, and those sites have been sending less and less traffic for years, so I wonder why every site still has them.

hombre_fatal 1y ago
The TFA is about how to craft a "Share on {ExternalSite}" URL, not a "Share this page" button.
0x00000000 1y ago
tiktok share links also dox you. they have a banner with the name and profile picture of the person that shared it
- troupo 1y ago
  They also track your friends and acquaintances through shares. Even if you don't give them access to contacts, and don't even use TikTok beyond scrolling through videos, they will start suggesting people who have seen your shares as your friends.
  - pinoy420 1y ago
    [dead]
- qingcharles 1y ago
  Facebook's too.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
hahn-kev 1y ago
Yeah I don't know if I've ever used them. Maybe once or twice ever. For me the main problem is UX. Sharing from my platform (copy url on computer, share button on android) is always in the same place. But the share button built in is never in the same place across different websites, how could it be?

blahgeek 1y ago

Does this mean that, when the user clicks a "share to social.network" button in random.com, the browser would first request the full html page of social.network (in the background) only to parse the rel="share-url" link? Seems a bad design.

qingcharles 1y ago
That's how I'm reading it? It's a bit clunky, but sometimes you have to be pragmatic :(

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

kemayo 1y ago

Looking at ShareOpenly, I think this is basically a reaction to "Mastodon instances make social sharing complicated from the web". A "share to Mastodon" button is impossible, and a button for every Mastodon instance in existence is impractical. Thus a "fuck it, I guess just put in a URL and we'll work out how to send something to it" solution. Speaking as someone who never ever uses a share button I think this is misguided, we should just remove that entire class of widget from the web, and people who want to share things can copy-paste the URL into their platforms of choice.

tegiddrone 1y ago
I agree. Except we aren't there with web literacy and having that integrated UX is significant.
- kemayo 1y ago
  I think the sort of person who would paste/type the URL for another social service into the freeform "or some other service" input on ShareOpenly is exactly the sort of person who has that web literacy, though. Which I guess doesn't support my "delete them all!" desire, but rather sadly reinforces keeping the status quo.

procaryote 1y ago

Exposing the sharing intent is a problem, not a goal. Sharing a link is easy. That's why URLs were invented. Exposing the sharing intent is only beneficial to companies that want to track you. Sure, pressing "share on facebook" might be slightly lower friction than copy-pasting the link, but if the sharing isn't worth that friction, perhaps don't?

hombre_fatal 1y ago

So, it's a way to tell other applications how they would craft a URL on your site such that they can prefill a form on your site? A meta tag in the html of your webpages seems like the wrong place for that info since it's not something that changes per page unlike the OpenGraph/TwitterCard meta tags that tell third-party apps how to generate a preview of the page. Surely a better place would be example.com/.well-known/share-url.

foxfired 1y ago

This is what I currently use on my blog and it works particularly well: navigator.share({ title: "hello", text: "World", url: window.location.href }); Plus if the page has images, the browser will automatically use it.

jeroenhd 1y ago
That will work for sharing (except on Firefox), but only Chromium support actually receiving these share events, which is half the spec.