Snap! or Not?
Posted on 08 December 2006, at 2:26 pm, by Judie Lipsett
I’m trying something new, and I would like your opinion. I’ve just added a service called Snap to Gear Diary that will show a preview of the page an outgoing link opens.
It works when you hover over a link – don’t click it, just hover your mouse over the link and see what you think.
Try it here. Try it again. Now try it one more time…you know you want to. 
It only works on links leaving the Gear Diary site – not links that point to internal items, so it isn’t quite as cluttery as it could be.
I especially like the previews it does of the sites listed in my favorites.
It’s not costing me anything, and it is not earning any income for the site. I suspect that they may get paid for poviding the service if searches are done through the window’s option – but I am not sure. I just think it is kindof neat.
So…is it a keeper? Or do you hate it? Let me know… 
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12 Comments For This Post
December 8th, 2006 at 3:01 pm
Judy: It works pretty slick, most of the time. It seems to need to hunt for awhile on some links, but the previews are pretty small and it’s hard to really read anything about the sites. Mostly seems to give an idea of what a site will “look like”. Am wondering if it’s the same idea as this http://www.bitty.com/ ?
p.s. Am enjoying my blue Vaja; thanx again. david.
December 8th, 2006 at 3:09 pm
Oops–sorry, how rude. I meant Judie. And by the way, despite my opinions, I liked the idea, however, i am wondering if we are then back to things going off “in your face” all the time when you are just trying to read/navigate a blog?
December 8th, 2006 at 3:17 pm
Ha – no problem!
Well, I looked at Bitty Browser, too – but it seems to be a browser that sits on the sidebar. You’re right that this is more a preview thing, so I am just mainly looking to see if people think it adds to their browsing experience, or if it is an annoyance. Like I said, it’s not earning income for the site nor is it costing anything…so it’s just a matter of do we like it or not.
December 8th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Once I came directly to the site (I view it 99% of the time through an RSS reader) and allowed geardiary and snap.com in FireFox’s NoScript, it seemed to work well, but I merely wanted to comment to remind you about the many readers that won’t notice due to it being blocked (and not thinking to unblock it unless they see a post like this specifically pointing out the feature) or, more likely, because they read all the articles via RSS.
-arebelspy
December 8th, 2006 at 5:07 pm
arebelspy, that is a very good point. So it won’t be missed by anyone, or bother anyone that doesn’t see it anyway. I think that includes those that use the Safari browser, too.
December 8th, 2006 at 6:56 pm
I like it. You can pre-check to see if it’s a site you already know w/o going to it, or go if you want. A timesaver.
December 8th, 2006 at 11:45 pm
Crunchgear got this a while back too, and I personally don’t really like it. If I want to see a page, I can just middle click it–it doesn’t take very long, and it beats accidentally passing over a link and having my computer freeze momentarily as it loads the snap.
By the way, I got my speakers last weekend (been meaning to say so) XD They’re great, thanks!
And now I have a bluetooth dongle 
December 8th, 2006 at 11:57 pm
I have a Firefox plug-in called Cooliris Previews, which is the same type of concept, except that it gets a full page, but displays in about half of the screen, where you can scroll if you choose and is maneuverable. Meaning, you can follow links in the preview or expand it as a new tab if you decide you want it there. Sometimes it’s a pain, because if you hover in the wrong spot you have to close the preview, but it is as simple as checking a box at the bottom of the browser window to toggle the previews on and off.
I didn’t know if I would like it, but I have grown quite fond of it.
Snap seems too small for me…must be my old eyes. LOL
December 9th, 2006 at 6:48 pm
It looks and works nice. If its free and easy to maintain… I say its a keep.
December 10th, 2006 at 8:19 pm
I quite like it, but if it gets removed it wouldn’t really bother me. Doesn’t seem to have any performance hit on my laptop running XP Pro SP2 and Firefox 1.5.0.8.
December 12th, 2006 at 6:25 am
Hey Judie…
I have to report that my experience with SNAP is that it’s EXTREEEEEEEEEEMELY annoying. The VERY worst thing about it is that it doesn’t have a kill-button. So when you’re just reading a page, and this little irritation pops up, there’s no way to gt rid of it. Ugh!!!!
And I don’t really get the idea behind it. Why on earth do I want to see a miniature preview of a web page? I KNOW what web pages look like. They all look the same! With minor changes. If I’m interested in what you’ve written, I’m going to click the link regardless of whether or not I’ve seen a chihuahua version of it.
My vote? Send it to Angola or Mozambique to hunt for landmines.
Blue skies
love
Roy
December 17th, 2006 at 11:31 pm
Okay…I have removed Snap! A very knowledgeable friend of mine (thanks Edwi) explained that if Snap’s server stalls or slows down, that it will have an adverse reaction on sites with Snap installed. Well, no thanks! So for now it is a no-go. Maybe we’ll try it again in the future…or not.