There’s a new bit of web tech that’s cropping up in more and more places, and it’s driving me up the bleedin’ wall. ‘Snap Preview Anywhere‘ pops up a preview of a linked page when you hover your pointer over the link text. Which is great, right?
Er… no. The preview’s too small to see anything much, and there’s no hover delay beyond loading time, so in densely-linked text these previews pop up like whack-a-mole puppets. The most stupid bit, to my mind, is that they usually pop up above the link text, obliterating the thing I’m trying to read. Plus, they somehow knacker the text that appears in the bottom bar of my browser, telling me to where the link points. Gaaaah!
Some people appear to like these things, and there are some ringing endorsements from influential people listed at the link above. To my mind, however, this is the sort of crap that should be done as a browser plug-in, not as a site-wide JavaScript doohicky. It’s interface, not content.
Anyway – if they’re pissing you off as much as they are me, go to Snap’s FAQ here, scroll down to the second question, and click the link to set a cookie. Annoying that you have to hold a cookie to opt out, but there we go.
Please, site owners – just pack it in. It’s not big, and it’s not clever.
(link via John Gruber, bless his minimalist grey background patterns)
[update: There’s an options linky in the corner of each pop-up, and from there you can turn the damned things off. I know this, because the above method doesn’t appear to have worked for me. Neither, for that matter, does the option thingy. I think because my browser is paranoid about cookies from servers that aren’t delivering the main page, which is usually a good thing.]