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Public news / January 2007 / Feeling the Snap?

Feeling the Snap?

Snap Preview Anywhere lets site owners add small pop-up previews to their links, which users see on mouseover. But is this technology useful or useless?

permanent link 30 jan at 18:12 by sp

There are 6 guest comments so far.

commentat 00:55 on 31 January 2007, Anthony wrote:

The most useless design trend since splash pages. The sooner webmasters wake up to themselves the better.

commentat 01:10 on 31 January 2007, Alex wrote:

why is that a useless design trend, Anthony? Would you care to explain?

commentat 01:37 on 31 January 2007, Ed wrote:

I'm actually curious about this too? I like seeing previews before I click on a link. When view RSS feeds of gallery sites I love that feature (if implemented) makes it easier to decided if I want to view the page or not.

commentat 05:04 on 31 January 2007, Ben wrote:

I don't like them either. They're slow and by the time they load, I could have been to the site and actually seen if the content on the site is what I'm looking for or not (not just the overall look from a tiny thumbnail of the page) and been back already.

They are quite pointless and a better use would to actually show content to see whether or not the site is somewhere you want to go. Websites weren't made for beauty contests (although some are right now), they were made as an information medium and snapshots does nothing to help that.

commentat 23:02 on 01 February 2007, David Yeiser wrote:

I don't like them because once the preview loads I can't use the scroll-wheel on my mouse to open the link in a new tab with Firefox.

However, sometimes I find it kind of nice to see what the site looks like before I click on it. But, as Ben said, that's only to see if it looks pretty or not.

Overall they're a hindrance before an aid.

commentat 23:16 on 01 February 2007, Ed wrote:

I can see the point. I've only seen them used in gallery sites where "beauty" is the point. I'm sure if I ran across this in a regular website I would be annoyed as well.

Come to think of it it reminds me of those sites that have links that aren't really links but Ads if that makes sense.

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