It didn’t seem that long ago that I released version 2 of my popular WordPress plugin Simple Social Bookmarks.For those who haven’t come across this before it displays social bookmarking icons on a post or page (and can be seen under this post).

Version 2 was almost a complete re-write and introduced a few more bookmarks and a direct link to my Simple URL Shortener plugin for shortening URLs.

Well, now, I’m jumping straight to version 3 in what is another complete re-write!

Where-as previous versions may have introduced 1 or 2 new bookmarking sites, version 3 will increase it from 43 to 158! And there’s more possibilities in future – I’ve trawled various sharing sites (such as AddThis, etc) for their lists of bookmarking sites and have come to a list of 432. I’ve then ranked them according to the number of Google hits against their URL (145 I haven’t yet done) – the higher the hits, the more used they are. Only those with over 100,000 hits have been included (with the odd exception). And that’s just the current situation – I’m sure by release, these figures will have changed.

Anyway, other than a plethora of new bookmarks, here’s what else is changing…

• I’m now using AddThis and Shareaholic for the majority of links – by using their API, they will handle the passing of data to the services. I’ve also added a new parameter so that you can specify which one of these companies will be given priority if they both handle the same service.
• I’ve removed use of Simple URL Shortener plugin – you now pass the shortened URL yourself, allowing any shortening plugin to be used
• All the default icons have changed – obviously lots added, but existing ones changed. This is because, with so many, I can’t use a swizzy matching set, as before, so I’m now using the sites own favicon.
• I’ve separated bookmarks and tools (e.g. sending the URL to a site that creates a PDF) and, optionally, you can display a separator between the two
• There are now 140 bookmarking services and 19 tools available
• Used smush.it to compress images
• I’m adding the ability to provide basic animation of the icons – one set for static display and another can be used for when the icon is “hovered over”.

If there’s anything else you’d like to see, now’s your chance as I’m still in the middle of the above changes. What would you like to see it do? What would you not like to see it do?

What I should do (and haven’t yet) is to look at the competing Social Bookmark plugins and see what they can do. I’m also mulling over the idea of integrating in Google Analytics as well. Hmm…

Microsoft, always ready to introduce their own program naming, have introduced the concept of the “Platform Preview” for Internet Explorer 7, which you can download and try.

Basically, it’s IE but without the ability to change the URL or move backwards through pages – they want you to try it out, but without thinking this is anything like the end product. It can installed alongside your current IE version, however.

What it does do, though, is allow you to test “under the hood” changes – particularly around HTML 5, JavaScript enhancements and (snigger) standards improvements.

A Beta version of the full browser was available a while ago, though, but it was soon replaced with further Platform Previews.

They’re very pleased with their Acid3 score of 95% (compared to 100% for Webkit based browsers, although a lot better than IE’s current 20% rating) and their quick (but extremely dodgy) JavaScript benchmark. Time will tell how it pans out…

One thing that IE9 does add is the ability for sites to create their own jump lists in Windows 7. Here’s an excellent article on how to achieve this. Google Chrome already supports jump lists, and it looks like Firefox will have it after 3.7 is released.

Tonight I noticed there was no power light at all on my Wii – normally, even if off, the light on the front is red. Now, there was a brief power cut on Monday night and I wonder if it happened then.

Anyway, I unplugged it (which involved moving the TV out and pulling out lots of cables!) and tried another power socket – nothing.

Bum.

Hopefully, I was thinking, it was the power supply – that would be cheap to replace!

I did a quick Google though and came across a Nintendo article that explains how the AC Adapter can be “reset” (I assume it has some kind of protective cut-out facility built in) – you, basically, unplug the power supply from both ends, leave it 2 minutes and then try it again. So I unplug it and leave it while I go and wash-up. Plugging it back in, I do indeed get power back!

One thing that would have helped would have been some kind of power light on the power supply itself – most laptop PSUs have one, and it’s a shame the Wii doesn’t. If it’s for “green” reasons, why not have a small button that you press – if it has power a light comes on momentarily?