Hi b…b,
The redesign should actually provide quicker loadtime with improved caching. Could you check out our latest version (v7.0.3.0) to see if you are still encountering this issue? We’ve rolled out a number of updates that should hopefully improve the performance even further.
As for the bookmark style, we’ve included many more flavors to provide additional options for customization and will be rolling out even more in the future. We’ve grown from three styles to, at present, ten… and even added a second layout option (vertical).
The pocket-style SexyBookmarks are still present, but with a cleaner rendering that improves loadtime, and all styles (themes) now offer service customization, where two of our styles (for ClassicBookmarks) previously only provided the top sharing networks without an option to edit the displayed services. Oh, and we now also support retina displays! ??
We’ve included real shortcodes for more flexibility in manual insertion, and as each button placement is a separate app, you can further customize the look for sharing on your site by choosing to incorporate any assortment of themes. We’ve basically kept all the options available in previous versions and added a ton more, but introduced a much sleeker interface to house the options and eliminate the bulkiness and intimidating settings panel, making v7 more user-friendly, customizable, and compatible with popular WP themes and plugins.
Because the plugin was redesigned from the ground up, incorporating completely new features to replace the dated ones, settings were unable to be carried over, but once they have been configured and saved in the new interface, they are safely stored to the specific app ID numbers for all future upgrades.
This wasn’t just a repackaging, but a complete reworking of the plugin that was conceptualized from the feedback provided by publishers who use our plugin. We began work on redeveloping our products and services this year based on years of collecting suggestions from our user-base.
There’s still a lot of work to do, but we are pouring our love and attention into making Shareaholic the best it can be, and feedback from the community does shape and guide the direction that we take with further revisions. ??
