
A while back I started using Snap Previews. They’re those little popup boxes that appear whenever you roll-over a link that leads to an external site. They give you a little preview of where you’ll be going.
Personally, I like the preview, but today I read a post over at Binary Bonsai about disabling snap previews. It looks like Michael, the author, isn’t as much of a fan as I am, and he’s not alone.
So, what do you think? Do you find them useful, or just annoying? Should I remove them completely, or should people who don’t like them just disable the preview themselves?
tip: to disable the previews, click the “options” link in the upper right corner of the preview window. You’ll be able to disable the previews for this site, or for all sites.
UPDATE (1.31.07): I’m still debating on if I’ll be keeping the previews or not, but I’ve noticed 2 things that I find quite interesting…
- In the comments here, and on Binary Bonsai, people have equated Snap Previews to pop-up ads. Why is that? I mean, they’re not really pop-up ads, they’re previews. Is it because they have the Snap logo on them?
- I’m a very visual person. I like the previews because they give me the opportunity to see where I’m going. For me, seeing a destination may be the deciding factor in my decision to go there. If you follow this story back from here, to Binary Bonsai, to Kottke, the Daring Fireball… you’ll notice that the other three sites use little to no images in any of their posts, and they all hate the previews. I use an image in almost every post, and I like the previews. Is there some connection between people who hate the previews, and people who don’t use images in their blogs?
Keep the comments coming. This is very interesting to me.