Jan 31 2007

Snap Preview Is Ruining Your Blog

Posted at 7:57 am under Interesting

There seems to be a backlash against the plugin that’s been making the rounds on every single blog I can think of. It’s called Snap Preview, and it puts a live preview of the link you’re about to go to on every link when you hover over it.

It’s neat, but it’s can also be annoying at times. Nick Wilson from Performancing has an interesting list of 3 reasons why Snap Preview is ruining your blog.

1. Accidental triggers: When scrolling, or just moving from one element (maybe a link, maybe a photo etc) to another, the unintentional triggering of the SPA popup is distracting, at best. It draws the eye away from the task at hand, and causes annoyance, and loss of concentration — if you’re actually selling anything, pay close attention to this point!

2. Click stalling: Quite often, when trying to click a link that features the Snap abomination, I have to click several times to get the damn thing to work. This is too much effort. If your site is that hard to use, you can bet I wont be back, and neither will others.

3. I trust you: No, really I do! Im at your blog, despite like everyone else being really busy, im at your blog! I just want to follow the f***ing link ok? Dont crowd me like some over-eager second hand car salesman trying to sell me a dodgy link, just let me see that its a link, read the anchor text and decide if I want to click it. I dont care what the bloody site looks like, if you’re linking to it, that’s good enough for me — really, get out of my face.

In two days, Slobokan and another blog I read regularly but can’t remember Robert Scoble have removed it from their sites. Let the backlash begin :-)
Update: Thomas Hawk joins the club. I’m glad I never installed it, to be honest.

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