Later
today Web previews product Snap is launching 8
new localized versions of their Snap Preview Anywhere
product. They will support 9 languages in all:
But whatever the language, it's up to end users the world over to decide if web previews are useful or an annoyance. Back in January Alex Iskold looked at several Web previews products, including Snap, Browster, Cooliris. Also in February I reviewed iReader, a browser extension that lets you preview the content of a link before you click on it. The general verdict for all these products was that they are potentially useful, but more often than not the implementation was an annoyance for the reader.
Since that time, Snap has released a number of upgrades to their Web previews product - specifically aimed at addressing those usability issues. Snap Preview Anywhere added a bubble icon, css themes, better and more granular control of the hover trigger, and a larger image size option. Also there is now an option to have just the icon as the preview trigger, which seems like an elegant way to let readers know that it's something in addition to a normal hyperlink - which they will soon realize is a web preview. This gets around the potential issue of people hovering their mouse cursor over links and getting unexpected preview pop-ups.
As you may have noticed, I've implemented Snap Preview Anywhere onto the site. I've already found it useful to 'preview' the webpage links of the commenters on Read/WriteWeb. But let me know your feedback on it - particularly the usability aspects.
Comments
Subscribe to comments for this post OR Subscribe to comments for all Read/WriteWeb posts
First! :-)
The previews are a great feature for people like me, with ADD :)
In the world of short attention span it's great to see the preview of what's below the URL without actually clicking on it.
As far as the usability goes, maybe some slight delay between the mouse hover and the popup showing might be useful?
Posted by: Marcin Brzezinski | March 27, 2007 3:34 AM
I'm not a huge fan of it, but I guess some people might find it useful.
Posted by: Ali | March 27, 2007 4:01 AM
Shouldn't web previews be built into browsers, not individual websites?
Posted by: Tim from bla.st | March 27, 2007 4:10 AM
As you say, it's improved since they started putting the icons next to the links rather than activating on link hover. They were awfully annoying before that point.
I agree with Tim - best done in the browser.
Posted by: Seth Wagoner | March 27, 2007 6:14 AM
Snap's product is great but tools (IMHO) are definitely better in the browser. I use CoolIris - a Firefox addon.
Posted by: Website Magazine | March 27, 2007 6:33 AM
Marcin, in the options menu you can change your hover delay preference to get a longer delay before the bubble appears.
Posted by: Tim Whalen | March 27, 2007 9:17 AM
i like the concept, but it always annoys me when i encounter them. not sure what that sais ;)
Posted by: sull | March 27, 2007 8:02 PM
Unnecessary clutter IMHO.
Posted by: Anders P. | March 28, 2007 12:57 AM