So what do people think of the Snap shots widget that has been cropping up all over the web?
It’s something any regular net user has probably seen quite often by now. If you place your cursor over a link, or sometimes an image, on a Snap shots enabled website, a small “preview” screen will appear, giving you a sneak peek of what you will see should you follow the link.
While I’m sure the idea has its merits, it’s not a concept that really appeals to me.
In fact I find it quite annoying on some websites where there are “clusters” of links. It becomes almost impossible to focus on reading the text for all the little snap shot screens that suddenly start popping up the minute you mouseover a link!
I imagine some people find seeing a preview of a link time saving, especially if what they see doesn’t turns out not to be of interest. I also suppose people can get a quick idea of whether a website is “safe for work”…
But possibly the most futile use I have seen of this widget is for images or thumbnails.
I’ve seen one or two blogs where a thumbnail of a photo has been linked to a larger version of the same photo on, say, a Flickr page. The snap shot preview image is, in some cases, smaller than the “thumbnail” though! Despite the ability to zoom in (once) on the preview. What’s the possible use in that?
I’m interested to hear what others think. Is this just a fancy “must have to keep up with everyone else” kind of gimmick, or do you see some value in the idea? Do you know any websites, or blogs, that are making effective and worthwhile use of the concept?
I do so agree… Am going to get it off my site. it’s so irritating.
I HAVE GREAT NEWS! Seriously!
I found out you can disable this thing on all sites you go to. When the box pops up, there’s a little disable tab, click on that, and choose disable on all sites. And it’s GONE.
I agree with you, this is something I have been loathing for a while now. I can’t see any decent reason for it. I do know some blog sites install it as standard, what a kind of hell those people are living in. :(
I hope that little tip I found out is useful for ya. ;)
Snoskred
http://snoskred.blogspot.com/
Hi, John,
I do agreed with you it is annoying at time on the pop up of the snap shot widget. At first it look cool, then like you said, when you have a lot of links it distracted your reading.
Thanks for visiting my blog
SK
Hate it, wont use it! I find it so annoying that 90% of the time I just navigate away from sites using it. Also it seems to cause my machine to get tempermental. I dont find the ’snapshots’ themselves do not give me any really useable info either. Wouldnt it be much better to write more descriptive text? Do I ask to much? Are you sorry you asked? LOL
Cheers!
Thanks for the comments everyone! Glad to know I’m not the only one who finds them annoying :)
@ Snoskred – Thanks for the tip … I’m going to give that a try now!
@ Lavender – those things causing a mere nuisance is one thing – actually slowing down your system is another, far worse matter. Ban them! ;)
I hate it to! Only one good thing about this is that snap shoots is free. You have to pay for iWebtool’s one. I prefer thumbnails integrated in my site with no preview or any other stupid things.
it is now possible to disable this, go to the snapshots site and in your settings choose disable
Thanks for that… Snoskred (see the second comment here) also offered a method for disabling the snaps.
Lol, i agree with you guys and i made a post on how to disable when it is sometimes irritating over here at http://www.teckitech.com/online/disable-snapshot-previews-on-all-the-sites/