Align social buttons correctly

Question

I am trying to put social buttons facebook and tweetmeme in our site. I liked the way it's done in yahoo sites. Please look

Yahoo Link

I looked at yahoo code, but the implementation style is very difficult to understand. It would be great if someone can help me in html/css coding.

Thanks.

Update

This is the code I have so far.. The issues I am having is Yahoo customized the css by changing the facebook and tweetmeme css behavior. Please check the attached image and compare with it. The code I am using is

---

<a name="fb_share" type="button_count" share_url="http://www.yahoo.com" href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php">Share</a><script 

src="http://static.ak.fbcdn.net/connect.php/js/FB.Share" type="text/javascript"></script>

<script type="text/javascript">
tweetmeme_url = 'http://www.yahoo.com';
tweetmeme_style = 'compact';
</script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://tweetmeme.com/i/scripts/button.js"></script>

---

Please let me know, can we have exactly they have. I liked the look and feel of that. :)

Thank You.

Answer 1

I solved this for http://www.easynda.com using tips from http://neilgoodman.net/2012/01/14/making-social-buttons-line-up-in-a-row-in-css/ and some refinements.

I started by trying to use margins or padding in CSS to adjust the position of the social buttons, but that didn't work. Each button has slightly different margins and padding, which meant my adjustments never worked right and didn't look the same across browsers.

What's needed is to be able to accommodate the variation between buttons and to get them to stay where I put them in my HTML. The solution to is using floats. Max Design has a nice tutorial on floats with examples here: //css.maxdesign.com.au/floatutorial/introduction.htm.

Following the tips from Neil's site got me to here - but with clear problems.

(I'd post an image, but don't have enough reputation points yet).

The LinkedIn button sits at the top of its DIV while the FB buttons sits in the middle of it's DIV as seen in the first image. There are a couple of issues to note:

a: the FB share button width is minimum 90px per //developers.facebook.co.... All well and good, however, the width is dynamic based on the number of shares one has.

b: there is no margin between the FB share and LI share button -

c: the LI share button needs more width, and dynamic width as it will get it's own count as time goes on.

c: 20 px height is not enough for FB - even thought the FB button is only 20px, the JS adds pixels above the visible button. Also note that the bottom of the count bubble is cut off

d: and most obvious of all, the vertical positioning with LI riding high.

I solved the problem by floating a container holding the buttons with a line-height if 1 and using some CSS to float the buttons displayed inline with a min width, min height, and left padding.

The results are what was live as of the date of this posting (again, need reputation points to post images and more than two links)

Here is my HTML and CSS:

<div class="social-button-container" style="position: relative; z-index: 999;">
    <!-- Facebook -->
    <div class="social-button fb-like" data-href="http://easynda.com" data-layout="button_count" data-action="like" data-show-faces="false" data-share="true"></div>
    <!-- LinkedIn -->
    <div class="social-button">
    <script type="IN/Share" data-url="http://www.easynda.com" data-counter="right"></script></div>
    <!-- Twitter -->
    <div class="social-button">
        <a href="https://twitter.com/EasyNDA" class="twitter-share-button" data-show-count="true" data-show-screen-name="false"></a>
    </div>
    <div style="clear: both;"></div>
</div>


.social-button-container {
  /*background-color: red;*/    
  /**
  * This is a nice CSS trick that allows you to clear an element
  * without having to add extra elements to your HTML. This helps
  * separate content from design, which should always be an architectural
  * goal.
  */
  float: left;
  line-height: 1;
}

.social-button {
  float: left;
  min-width: 100px;
  display: inline;
  min-height: 22px;
  padding-right: 5px;
}

Answer 2

Put your social media buttons into parent divs and give those divs an id each.

Target the inner iframe elements, e.g:

#fblikeblock iframe, #gplusblock iframe {
vertical-align: top !important;
}

where fblikeblock and gplusblock are the parent divs.

and use this on your parent divs:

#fblikeblock, #gplusblock {
display: inline !important;
position: relative;
zoom: 1;
}

Answer 3

Well, you basically just have to deal with the fact that one is an inline (a) element, the other a block (iframe) element, after that it becomes quite easy, just test that:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<style type="text/css">
#fb_share, iframe {
    display: block;
    float: left;
    line-height: 2em;
    margin: 0 1em 0 0;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>

<a id="fb_share" name="fb_share" type="button_count" share_url="http://www.yahoo.com" href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php">Share</a>
<script src="http://static.ak.fbcdn.net/connect.php/js/FB.Share"></script>

<script>
tweetmeme_url = 'http://www.yahoo.com';
tweetmeme_style = 'compact';
</script>
<script src="http://tweetmeme.com/i/scripts/button.js"></script>

</body>
</html>

Answer 4

They are using an unordered list at the elements to show the buttons.

A UL is mostly used to show a list of items vertically but you can use CSS to make the items appear next to each other instead.

<ul>
  <li style="display:inline">One</li>
  <li style="display:inline">One</li>
</ul>

I think the above would work ok.

All you need to do then is right align it.

<div style="width:400px">

    <ul style="float:right">
      <li style="display:inline">One</li>
      <li style="display:inline">One</li>
    </ul>

</div>

Don't forget to use classes instead of inline styles like I have here.