Written by Alex Iskold and edited by Richard MacManus
Last week it was reported that Browster, one of the first companies to deliver previews of web pages, is done. Browster drew a lot of attention in 2005 and was backed by a 6M first round from Advanced Technology Ventures, Vanguard Ventures, First Round Capital, and individual investors.
Browster delivered previews of web pages (before clicking on a link) via a browser plug-in. Cooliris and Snap are companies doing similar things. But the question of whether previews are actually a good - and viable - idea is still up in the air. Therefore in this post we look at various kinds of Web previews and decide if the concept is here to stay, or will it go down with the Browster ship.
The basic idea behind previews is simple: they save you a click. Instead of clicking on a link to see the content, you can get a preview of the page using a gesture - typically a mouseover. Assuming you can decide if the page is interesting or not based on the preview, you can save a click and more importantly the page load.
The big assumption is that
the preview is useful, which is not always the case. For instance a thumbnail preview may
be useful if you already know the look and feel of the site, but otherwise you can't
really tell what you are looking at. This is because scaling the snapshot of a page down
to a thumbnail results in a substantial loss of information. As we will see below,
Cooliris and Snap are using different techniques to avoid this problem.
Netflix solves the problem in a different way. Instead of showing you a scaled version of the page, Netflix shows you a synopsis of the movie when you mouse over its link. For movies, this works really well - and it would work well for many other things, like books, music albums and electronics. So it's too bad that other sites do not do this.
Netflix preview
Cooliris, one of the Firefox recommended extensions, offers great quality previews. It works by popping up a little blue square when a user moves their mouse over a link. If the user clicks on the square, a preview of the link comes up. The secret of Cooliris is its simplicity. Firstly, the previews shown are almost the size of the actual page. Secondly, the previews are not images, but actual pages loaded into an iframe and overlayed on top of the current page. While this seemingly would be the same as loading the page in another tab, it definitely feels lighter. What helps is that we do not need to close the tab, because once we click away the preview disappears.
The makers of the Snap search engine recently released a site preview technology that allows bloggers and webmasters to turn on previews for any link on their site. Unlike Cooliris, Snap's technology is powered by JavaScript that sits inside the page. To activate it, bloggers and webmasters need to paste a small chunk of code into their pages. Also unlike Cooliris, Snap shows a smaller preview when the user moves the mouse over any link. TechCrunch recently added Snap previews and we saw quite a few readers complain about it getting in the way. Personally, I like the Cooloris solution better - since it requires an additional gesture to get the preview.
TechCrunch also features a completely different kind of preview - dynamic blog search results from the blog search engine called Sphere [Ed: this is coming soon to R/WW too]. What Sphere does is very impressive, but perhaps what's even more impressive is how it presents the results. In a way, Sphere's solution is similar to Netflix because it only shows a subset of information. This strategy allows Sphere to generate an intelligent preview of the search results. A combination of speed and excellent visualization makes this type of preview very compelling.
Since quite a few companies are doing previews, we need to understand their benefit. It seems that current preview makers fall into three major categories:
The companies listed under the second and third bullets do not concern themselves with monetization via preview, since they make money in a different way. For the companies that choose the preview to be their core business, some form of advertising must be in place.
What Browster used to do in the past was replace the advertisements from the pages with their own. This made some publishers very angry. Altering the content of web pages is certainly a risky business and spells lawsuits. Augmenting the previews with context sensitive ads, outside the preview frame, seems to be cleaner - but it requires a heavier back-end engine and could cause delays, which would be deadly.
Since Browster is out of the game now, it does not need to address this problem. Their competitor Cooliris looks to be a university project and so far they do not show any concern about making money. If they become serious about monetizing this technology, it will be interesting to see what route they will take.
So in the end we have to ask: Are previews a good idea? We think the answer is: Yes! If done right (and this is a big if), then previews can greatly enhance our online experience and save us a lot of time over the long run. Saving one click at a time will make us more productive and will save us minutes every day. And since there are incentives for companies to deliver preview technologies, we expect to see more developments in the near future.
So: Browster is dead, long live previews. But let us know what you think about previews and tell us your favorite ones.
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Browster Is Gone, But Are Web Previews Here To Stay?.
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Web previews are becoming more and more popular. If you are not familiar with them, they provide a snapshot of a web page before actually visiting the web page. Snap is a search engine that has exported its technology across the web (and particularly o... Read More
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I'm not a huge fan of "previews", and I think that it often gets in the way (who needs a preview of google.com ?)
Posted by: Tim | January 8, 2007 2:22 PMit's quite easy to get rid off it though. For Snap, go to Snap.com and select "desactivate"...
One of the hidden interesting features of web previews is that they are capturing "attention metadata" i.e. what the user is actually interested in. Its kind of an no-brainer to throw a (relatively) non-intrusive text ad to the right of the main preview bar. You know what URL they're on and what URL they're previewing so thats 2 pages of content to target the ad against. I say this is an ad platform without a doubt. Also, its super useful to users, I enjoy using it on sites that do support it.
Posted by: chad | January 8, 2007 3:14 PMWe like Snap, I believe it depends on what look and feel you want on your site. It's all good that so many are developing options.
Posted by: Bill Olen | January 8, 2007 3:44 PMPersonally I don't like mouseover web previews (the one I know well is Snap's, the others I haven't tested yet). For me, they are just useless and make the site inaccessible and slower to load. You should give an idea about the site in the context that covers the link - not with a preview stuck in a square of 48x48px
Posted by: Emre Sokullu | January 8, 2007 4:15 PMAnother fan of snap right here.
Posted by: Please Eat My Pies | January 8, 2007 7:57 PMPREVIOUS SUCK! Big time! They are so annoying that I'm actually making an effort to AVOID mouse-overing links at sites that use Snap. LOL. They suck... please don't add them to Read/Write web.
Posted by: permanent hater | January 8, 2007 8:20 PMHmm... I can't believe I typed 'previous' instead of 'previews'. I guess it's late!
Posted by: permanent hater | January 8, 2007 8:21 PM@permanent hater
Do you hate all previews or just the ones that are mouse over? How about a gesture based ones, what do you think about these?
Alex
Posted by: Alex Iskold | January 8, 2007 9:01 PMAny site preview is just a marginal imrovement of our web experience and it's often very annoying. The thing is one can't make business out of it.
Posted by: Danny | January 8, 2007 10:49 PMI really don't like 'em, to the extent I start to avoid sites with them...disturb my surfing and can't read em anyway - they remind me of popups. Anyone have a preview remover software widget?
Posted by: alan patrick | January 9, 2007 12:44 AM@alan, great idea :) we need a preview remover Firefox extension!
Posted by: Emre Sokullu | January 9, 2007 2:17 AM@alan,
Do you not like Netflix previews either?
Alex
Posted by: Alex Iskold | January 9, 2007 5:18 AM@Alex - what would be nice is if I had the option to decide when to display a preview when I mouse-over a link. Something like holding the Option button (on a mac) while doing that. But to have a preview each time you mouse-over is just horrible and bulky.
Posted by: permanent hater | January 9, 2007 7:12 AM@permanent hater
I agree, this is what we are discussing in the post. Previews need to have a special gesture.
Alex
Posted by: Alex Iskold | January 9, 2007 7:44 AMI find previews like Snap to be irritating. They disrupt from the flow of reading and don't always provide a good preview.
I can't comment on Sphere's contextual blog tool but I have tried their Sphere it toolbar widget. I find that it finds the top business blogs but not the average blogs. It doesn't do as well as Google or Yahoo at finding blogs.
Posted by: Leon | January 9, 2007 11:55 AMShowing the complete page on hover.. that's not interesting. I tried this summary site www.saarr.com, Good one but needs more improvement
Posted by: Tom Hand | January 20, 2007 12:03 PMI've been using BROWSTER since it's debut Jan 2005--and have found it practically indespensible (now using w/ Firefox 2 + IE-7 but only when forced to use the latter;-)
As someone expressed (above), Previews most certainly DO make have a "lighter feel" to them. I also find most Preview-types annoying, so annoying!
And even Browster used to annoy---yet it's previous "parents" really upgraded the daylights out of it. It's become "mature" and even "calm" --no preview modules exploding in one's face...what I referred to Browster's developers as the "landmine effect" when urging them to do something to calm it down. And they did (guess others had same impression).
Also very fond of OPERA (the browser not so much the music;-) which I used less & less because Browster didn't work with Opera. The Browster Co. said they were working on that & that the 2 would be working together by the end of Q4 '06. Well now, that ain't gonna happen, duh!
So for me anyway, I'm sorry they're gone now. I'm NO FAN of either Cooliris or Snap, they get in the way! Not being a website publisher or online business owner, I can't empathize. Online Ads are a helpful & sometimes entertaining source of info. Yet I can't complain about any "ad shortage on webpages"--that would be akin to griping that our food lacks sufficient cholesterol!
This one prefetch/previewer saved many clicks along the way. It also helped conserve ENERGY, probably from precluding repititions (yawn) or maybe just that "light" feeling -- which may sound pretty piddly to anyone who doesn't feel the same.
Processing / managing So Much Online Information gets exhausting! So even the small tools really HELP that process along; it adds up. That "light feeling" described it best. One less page to "Close Tab" after tab. Also, I csn ZIPZOOOOM down any page full of links or results where the Browster icons were aligned by simply rolling the mouse wheel---that + Broadband has been a Real Wow!
From a user-consumer's perspective, Browster never got in my way of viewing Desirable Ads. Guess The Browster won't be upgraded any further so... good thing it was recently tweaked to near-perfection. Now that it's gone I'll be sure to put my copy on CD for when a reinstall is needed.
PS: My opinion absolutely does NOT reflect a $$$ intere$t in that company (would be soooo out of luck if that were true, hahah!)
Posted by: sophie m. | January 30, 2007 3:39 PMWhy at full validity of harm them and continue to apply in many areas of medicine and sports? WBR LeoP
Posted by: Pharmacy Wizard | January 31, 2007 6:35 AM