Configuring the services on Launchpad On-Page

Introduction

Launchpad On-Page is a standalone, customizable viral sharing menu that will allow you to quickly and easily convert your Web content into portable widgets. The sharing menu allows users of your site to post the content widget to their destination of choice, such as Google, Facebook, MySpace, etc.

This guide discusses how to re-order the services in the Clearspring Share Menu, using the Launchpad On-Page APIs.

Audience for this Guide

This guide is for developers who are tasked with implementing Clearspring Launchpad On-Page Share Menu with their Web content and wants flexibility in ordering the services displayed on the share menu.

This guide assumes that the reader is familiar with Launchpad On-Page and its APIs. If you are not familiar with the APIs please review them at: http://www.clearspring.com/docs/tech/apis/on-page

Share Menu

Launchpad On-Page allows you to add the Clearspring Share Menu to any type of content that you want shared. By default all available services are displayed in the Share Menu and are shown in alphabetical order.

The services displayed and their order can be fully controlled using the available APIs. The following sections describe how to include and exclude services and how to re-order the services.

Controlling the Service List

The default service menu displays all the available service offering from Clearspring. This allows for your content to be shared across a number of services and methods. However there maybe a need to limit what services and types your content should be shared. There are two ways of controlling the service menu, what services to include list and what services to exclude list. The servicesInclude list will display all the services defined in the list. For example, you many only want to display sharing to MySpace, Facebook, Google and all bookmark services. Your servicesInclude list will look like this:

<script type="text/javascript">
$Launchpad.ShowMenu(
  {userId: UID,
  customCSS: "http://cdn.clearspring.com/launchpad/skins/blue.css",
  widgetName: "Hello World",
  source: "PutWidgetHere",
  servicesInclude: ['myspace', 'facebook', 'google', 'bookmark']});
</script>

The service menu will look exactly as you defined. You will notice that all other services are not available, since using the serviceInclude list will only display what is defined.

If you add only a single service to the serviceInclude list, the menu will automatically go to the service’s interface, not requiring the user to click a button. For example, if you want to only allow sharing with Friendster, the serviceInclude list would look like:

<script type="text/javascript">
$Launchpad.ShowMenu(
  {userId: UID,
  customCSS: "http://cdn.clearspring.com/launchpad/skins/blue.css", 
  widgetName: "Hello World",
  source: "PutWidgetHere",
  servicesInclude: ['friendster']});
</script>

The service menu will display the Friendster interface directly:

The servicesExclude list allows you to define all the services that should not be displayed. This provides the ability to easily remove services without having to define all the serivces manually in the serviceInclude list. For example, you want the users to have access to all the service except MySpace, Facebook, Google, embed capabilities and desktop. The servicesExclude list would look like:

<script type="text/javascript">
$Launchpad.ShowMenu(
  {userId: UID,
  customCSS: "http://cdn.clearspring.com/launchpad/skins/blue.css", 
  widgetName: "Hello World",
  source: "PutWidgetHere",
  servicesExclude: [‘desktop’,`myspace’,`facebook’,`google’,’embed’]});
</script>

The service menu will display all the available services except those specified, as seen below:

There are five “special” services, (post, send, bookmark, embed and desktop) that when defined in the serviceInclude and the serviceExclude lists will enable or disable the tabs. This gives you the ability to easily add or remove a complete list of services with out the need to enter each individually.

Using the serviceInclude and the serviceExclude lists provide the greatest flexibility in defining the service menu for your needs.

Ordering the Service List

By default the list of services is displayed in alphabetical order. If you prefer a different order, it is simple to override the default setting. For example, you may want to show MySpace, Facebook, and iGoogle in the top row of the service menu. To re-order the buttons, make a servicesInclude call like this:

<script type="text/javascript">
$Launchpad.ShowMenu(
  {userId: UID,
  customCSS: http://cdn.clearspring.com/launchpad/skins/blue.css,
  widgetName: "Hello World",
  source: "PutWidgetHere",
  servicesInclude : ['myspace', 'facebook', 'google', 'myyearbook','live', 'spaces', 
                     'netvibes', 'freewebs', 'xanga', 'friendster','tagged', 'blackplanet', 
                     'blogger', 'typepad', 'livejournal','multiply', 'eons', 'pageflakes', 
                     'piczo', 'webwag', 'hi5', 'vox','orkut', 'typepadsidebar', 
                     'bloggersidebar']
</script>

The menu will be ordered based on the services order of the servicesInclude list, from left to right, wrapping over to the next row.

The tabs, post, bookmark, embed, email and bookmark, on the share menu can also be ordered using the same method as services. Place the tab names in the order preferred in the serviceInclude list.

Ordering the services and the tabs is that simple. The full list of services can be found in the API documents located at: http://www.clearspring.com/docs/tech/apis/on-page#serviceIds.

Questions / Comments / Concerns

We welcome and encourage all feedback in this process.

Please feel free to contact us.

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