Enhancing Theme Navigation with LinkedIn Share Buttons

Introduction

In the development of web applications, maintaining consistency across different themes and ensuring all features are accessible can be a challenge. This post discusses how we addressed an oversight in the landing page project where LinkedIn share buttons were missing from the desktop navigation in certain custom themes.

The Problem

The devlog-ist/landing project uses custom themes, such as nan, retro, corporate-nan, and corporate-retro, which hide the default layout header and implement their own navigation. While LinkedIn share buttons were added to the mobile menus, they were inadvertently omitted from the desktop navigation in these custom themes. This inconsistency meant that desktop users on these themes couldn't easily share content on LinkedIn.

The Solution

To resolve this, we added the missing LinkedIn share button to the desktop navigation for the specified custom themes. This ensured that all users, regardless of the theme they were using, had consistent access to the LinkedIn share functionality. The implementation involved modifying the navigation templates for the nan, retro, corporate-nan, and corporate-retro themes to include the LinkedIn share button alongside other share options.

Here's a simplified example of how the LinkedIn share button might be added to a navigation template:

<nav>
    <ul>
        <li><a href="example.com">Home</a></li>
        <li><a href="example.com/about">About</a></li>
        <li><a href="example.com/blog">Blog</a></li>
        <li>
            <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?url=example.com" target="_blank">
                Share on LinkedIn
            </a>
        </li>
    </ul>
</nav>

Key Insight

Attention to detail is crucial when developing and maintaining web applications with multiple themes. Ensuring feature parity across all themes provides a consistent user experience and prevents user frustration. Regular audits and testing can help identify and address such inconsistencies.