Snappy or sappy?
by Brian Hayes
Published 6 December 2006
Dear Readers,
You may have noticed something weird in these pages over the past few days. When you roll your mouse cursor over a link to an external web page, a thumbnail preview of the page pops up like a thought balloon. For example, try it with This Link. If any of you have strong opinions about this sort of thing, one way or the other, I’d be grateful to hear them. Myself, I’m undecided.
Note: As far as I know, the previews will appear only if you’re reading these pages with an ordinary web browser, not with an RSS reader.
Update 2006-12-08: The verdict is in. Bit-player is unsnapped. While I’m at it, I’m also turning off the little quiz that greets commenters. At some point the quiz may come back, but I’m looking at other ways to deal with the problem of comment-spam.
Responses from readers:
Please note: The bit-player website is no longer equipped to accept and publish comments from readers, but the author is still eager to hear from you. Send comments, criticism, compliments, or corrections to brian@bit-player.org.
Publication history
First publication: 6 December 2006
Converted to Eleventy framework: 22 April 2025
It’s faster and less annoying to just open the link in a new window or new tab.
For what it’s worth, the thumbnail does pop up in the RSS reader FeedDemon.
My response is mildly negative: the annoyance of unintended popups strikes me as likely to exceed the benefit of the preview.
D’oh!… coffee just kicked in, and I realized that the thumbnail came up not while mousing over the link in the RSS text entry, but while viewing with FeedDemon’s internal browser.
Well, it’s fun, novel, and refreshing. But it’s utterly useless. I can’t read a word off of the balloon. Plus, the useless thumbnail obscures the text on your webpage, the text I came to read in the first place.
Why hide your own words with a useless pictures of other website? The link itself is good enough.
It is pure sappy. Do not add any value to user in my humble opinion.