I am sure the creators of Snapshots wanted to make money improve the usability on blogs with their little popup window widget. However I think they have done the opposite.
I personally find it very intrusive and distracting. I think mouse-over-preview-windows make sense on things like thumbnail pictures (to see the larger image), portfolio links (to see the the previews of digital works)…etc, but definitely not on all links!
I know that premium publishers can make money with it, but I don’t understand why smaller blogs are putting it on their blog? Putting something that decreases the usability of your blog without any given benefit doesn’t really make sense to me. I would understand if the opportunity cost of sacrificing usability was to make money.
What’s your opinion about snapshots widget and usability?
i think its good. But i’m not use it at my site. :)
They INCREASE usability. You can see what’s behind a link which is a big time saver.
I have them on my site and love them. Not sure what your beef is – they don’t have any blinking ads and you can configure them to include all links, external links only or even select links using their markup script.
Doc, if it has customization options then that’s good. Perhaps the fault is on the users’ side then, enabling it on all links.
Personally, I don’t want to see preview of every single link in the blog post. And it’s worse when you are reading the content and you accidentally mouse over the links and these popups keep coming out…. i think that definitely decreases the usability!
i hate it, i hate it even more when i accidentally mouse over the link. The preview it too small to make an impact on me if the specific link/site is worth visiting.
i agree with you 100% on this. one of the most annoying plugins on the web!
HATE THEM. I never go back to a site that has them. The previews are too small to actually read the link so you have to click on it anyway, why block my view while I’m reading with something I can’t read? Hate them.
It takes unwanted time for loading the page content, i don’t suggest to have this tool.
not use them anymore.
like Red, i hate them! There so annoying and such a nuisance! I look down on sites with it!