I just installed Snap Preview on my site. Looks cool, but is it really useful? Please let me know. Should it stay or should it go?
You can see it when you move the mouse over any of the links in my articles.
Update:
On basis of the comments I have removed the preview. But at the same time I have a plugin for your browser to recommend.
My eyes. Please, take it away.
But seriously, it’s just annoying, and I cannot see that it’s very useful. People visit sites for their content, not their layout. At least, that’s me.
I think you’re not alone with that opinion. I’ll keep it there for a while, but I am like you not sure about exactly what benefit this kind of preview will give?
Leave the choice to the visitor.
I installed Cooliris.
It’s a firefox extension with similar, with similar but much more configurable features, which is very usefull in some websites.
I can definitively see how it’s useful, link-clicks are a scarce resource and people don’t want to waste them on just anything. Very often in the split second before deciding on wether or not to follow a link I will check the URL for clues to its content. People do visit sites for the content, yes, but just like we judge books by their covers, the appearance of a website can give another clue about what this is all about. NSFW-links is the obvious example.
That said, I find that this particular way of doing it disturbs the reading, for one thing, we are not used to (and thus not expecting) little blobs of information popping up like this, secondly I have a huge issue with information obscuring information. (It’s one of the reasons I prefer the iPod to the Creative Zen, the former will display the volume bar in its own area of the screen, whereas the latter will just stack the volume bar (or other types of information) on top of eachother, leaving only the item on top legible.)
In principle I think this kind of behaviour/functionality belongs in the browser (either natively or through plugins/extensions) and not on the websites themselves. How to present this kind of information in a useful way is a bit tricky though - one could imagine a seperate area along with the browser controls, but it’s not really spacious up there…
Yes. Defintely a browser add-on, and not site-specific.
I don’t see the use for this at all. It might be better with just a snippet of text (headline of the webpage referring to) or something instead…Like some forum implementations has. Don’t know if this is doable or practicle though…but the snapshot of the webpage gives me nothing.
Can’t get it! I can’t see it or it does not work on my pc at work. I’m not “administrator” - so that prob wy!
But it seems kind off lame! Takes time and it pop’s up all the time?!!!
Now I get it! This pc is just playing with me!
I think it is a good idea, but the pop-ups are turning up all over the screen. It should have stick to a special point, for example your left side bar or something! It’s quite annoying as mentioned above!
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