Cornell Finch

Snap Preview – The Latest Annoying Popup

Have you seen it yet? No? I’m surprised. It’s everywhere. A quick surmisation for you. Snap Preview allows the viewer of a website to see a preview of the website that is linked to from any site or blog. Yep, it’s that simple. It’s also that annoying.

As you can see from the image on the left, whenever the viewer hovers over a link (any link) within a Snap enabled website the preview pops up. Imagin that on a site for someone like //engtech who regularly uses lots of links in a blog postA great post by the way, you should go look! Middle click the link and open it in a new tab in Firefox. What, you’re still using IE6? SUcks to be you!. You won’t be able to see the content for the bloody Snap preview!

To make matters worse, the guys (I don’t know who) thought it would be a good idea to implement the service for wordpress.com blogs. Fair enough, it’s another little gadget that if the blogger wants it they can have it. What gripes me is that it is an opt out service. This means that it’s turned on by default and the blogger has to change the option to off for themselves.

When I am reading a blog I want to be able to read a blog. If I want to see the content at the end of link I will click the link and open it in a new tab thanks. So, please consider your readers and think carefully whether they want these annoying previews on the links. Unless you can answer 100% yes, please switch them OFF or remove the service from your blog.