This blog post was originally posted on the SexyBookmarks’ blog. Shareaholic has since taken over the responsibility for the continued development and improvement of SexyBookmark publisher plugins!

As promised, you’ve all been handed the keys to a brand new shiny Ferrari! Ok, so maybe it’s not a literal Ferrari, but it should certainly load up just as fast as one! Move over SexyBookmarks v2 series… Time to make room for a new sheriff. One who calls himself v3.0!

Completely gutted and revamped

After working with Gautam on this release, I kinda feel like an aircraft designer… Always looking for ways to reduce weight and increase speed! That has certainly been the case with this version anyway. We completely gutted the plugin of anything unnecessary in terms of PHP, CSS, JS, and images, so now the overall filesize should be much more manageable.

We also reduced “weights” by minifying JS/CSS and by running all public images through Smush.it in order to save on image file sizes as well. Overall, I have to say that I’m extremely pleased with the outcome of the “gutting” process, but the BIG savings weren’t made there… They came in the form of cSprites, which enabled us to dynamically create an image sprite based SOLELY on the networks you select in the plugin options page!

With speed comes risk…

There are a few drawbacks to the Dynamic Sprite Generator feature though. Mainly, just that many users may have server setups which have folder permissions NOT set to writeable by default. Since we’re generating images/css based on your selections, the css/images folders associated with the plugin will need to be writeable in order for the feature to work.

If you notice that the plugin gives you a warning message after saving your changes in v3.0, then you’ll need to set your css/images folders to 755 before you can use the feature. See here for more info: http://sexybookmarks.net/documentation/usage-installation#chmodinfo

Not sure if I’d classify this as a “drawback” per se, but upon upgrading to v3.0 you’ll need to login and go to the Plugin Options page (Settings -> SexyBookmarks) to save changes in order to generate your new custom sprite. This will ensure that the sprite is created from ONLY the icons you’ve chosen to be displayed, and must be done in order to use this feature.

Another drawback is that the PHP features which allow us to save you some page load time and server resources are only available in servers which are running PHP5+ with the PHPGD library installed. We’ve done our best to ensure that there are enough automated checks in place which will simply revert you back to using the “old” static sprite if you do not have both of those things available in your server setup.

Lastly, the Dynamic Sprite Generator feature won’t work if you’re using the “Custom Mods” option… This should be obvious, as we can’t be sure of file names of your custom icons and stylesheets. Just wanted to make sure everyone knows this though, so I shouldn’t be expecting any bug reports about it.

Last, but certainly not least…

Reducing file sizes and adding a Dynamic Sprite Generator feature wasn’t the ONLY thing we did in this upgrade… Check out the full list of fancy schmancy stuff below!

1. New Sprite Image is generated when you save options

2. Also reduced the size of the images with Smush It

3. Separated Background Images

4. Fixed Translation Strings

5. Added option to load javascript in blog’s footer

6. Added compatibility with YOURLS plugin

7. Added Settings link in plugin’s information section

8. Many improvements in the coding efficiency

9. Minified public JS

10. Added DZone

11. Added Kaevur (Estonian)

12. Added Virb

13. Added Box.net

14. Removed Devmarks as it no longer exists

15. Added Google Reader

16. Updated the old Google Bookmarks icon

17. Added Bonzobox

18. Added Zabox

19. Added OkNotizie (Italian)

20. Added Springpad

21. Added Plaxo

22. Added Viadeo

23. Added option to allow you to NOT use a URL shortener if you so choose

24. Added new feature to Mister-Wong so that now the “.com” extension is replaced dynamically based on your locale

25. Minified stylesheet to save a couple KB