WordPress.com: Snap Preview Live Anywhere, Everywhere
Written by David Peralty in
13 Comments
Against what I consider their better judgement, the folks over at WordPress.com have released the Snap Preview Live Anywhere plug-in into the general WordPress.com population.
I am not a fan of the plug-in. I think it degrades the user experience by not only adding what is basically extra javascript we don’t need, but I am the type of reader that highlights text as I go. I don’t want a bubble image of a website messing up my reading and distracting me.
If you think like me though, you have an option. Head on over to Presentation and then Extras, and just uncheck the box relating to this feature. Watch as your blog loads slightly faster, and you get a thumbs up from me.
Don’t get me wrong, I am all about having choice, and I understand that some people love the plug-in, but I hope more people turn it off, rather than keep it on. I hope to see more useful plug-ins added to WordPress.com over the next while.
I hate this plugin. Over all, it makes the navigation slower and more difficult.
Thanks Thássius, glad to see someone is on my side…
Have you seen how many hundreds of positive comments that thing gets? It’s crazy.
I wish this plug-in was not enabled by default.
I think why many like it is because it’s cool and something of new to them.
Usability wise as we here know it contradicts itself. The good is people would know where they are going however it degrades the readability if the person’ mouse doesn’t move away from the link.
Maybe we could use a resize feature in it or a disable image but display URL for convenience.
Agreed! I hate the feature.
I’m another that hates the plug-in. I don’t highlight the text that I read but I seem to habitually follow around things with my mouse and I hate when I’m reading a sentence and a stupid window pops up to show me the site. Aaaagh!
You all bring a tear to my eye, as I thought I was going crazy as the only one that didn’t like the plug-in.
I think they enabled it by default so that those that like it don’t have to “learn” anything, but those that hate it will look to find how to shut it off.
It’s so refreshing to find others who don’t like it. It’s too intrusive for me – I highlight text sometimes and follow the text with the mouse too. (mmm… Now I’m wondering how most people read…)
And it seems like Snap Preview is everywhere these days. I will not say it can’t be useful sometimes, but for me that’s the exception, not the rule, so having it all over the place is more of an annoyance rather than a convenience. It particularly bugs me when mousing over links in a blogroll.
I found one useful way to use Snap Preview – for Amazon product links. In the pop-up window you see the details of the product and text is readable. I left Snap Preview for my links exchange page so that visitors can get some impression of the websites listed. Otherwise I agree that it is not a good idea to use it anywhere – just for information that can be readable in the pop-up window.
Is there any known plugin like this that generated a size-shrunk snapshot of a referred URL and embeds this in the posting ? So no popups but statically showing he snapshot as an embedded image ?
/gunnar