default Twitter button doesn't load image

Question

I went to Twitter's resource page here (https://twitter.com/about/resources/tweetbutton) and got the following code:

<a href="https://twitter.com/share" class="twitter-share-button" data-count="vertical">Tweet</a><script type="text/javascript" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>

When I put this in my Wordpress template, I don't get the Twitter button -- I just get the text "Tweet". However, when I change the src for widgets.js to include https:// or http:// at the beginning it works.

Could it be that it's just an error that they forgot the protocol? Also, do you think it is better to use https (for consistency with the share link) versus http, or does it not matter?

Thanks for your suggestions.

Answer 1

The URL "//example.com/script.js" tells the browser to open the URL using the protocol of the current page, which is likely to be "file://" if your browser opened an html file on your own machine. Of course, you don't have a file called "file://example.com/script.js" on your computer.

In the past, urls for embedded widgets used to include the protocol (http or https), but a site visitor would receive warnings whenever a secure page loaded a script from an insecure page, and sometimes even vice versa. Now, widgets from Twitter, Google Analytics, and other sites no longer specify the protocol so that the same embed code can work on any page on the internet. The downside is that this does not work when you embed such a widget into a file and view it on your own browser by double-clicking it!