explodedlibrary bunker

please don't hate me - I'm turning Snap Previews back on

[April 3 addition: This post has been superseded by the developments mentioned in this post of the main blog. I'm leaving it because I think some of my arguments remain valid, even if they're no longer relevant.]

[March 19 addition: This post was originally drafted a week ago and was intended for the main explodedlibrary blog, but I decided to shelve the post and cancel the plans to bring back the Snap previews there. I was worried about being ridiculed and excoriated by my blogging peers for going against the prevailing wisdom that Snap previews suck. Eventually I came to this compromise, to say my piece and experiment with the previews turned on here, in a blog which hardly anybody knows about. That way nobody can accuse me inflicting this infernal device on my existing readers. After all, although I may disagree with the view which the majority seems to have taken on this issue, there's a certain point where I should just accept the situation and move on. Depending on how things go, I may turn off Snap here in the bunker or bring it back into the main blog.]

The "I hate Snap previews" backlash erupted shortly before my trip to Tasmania. It was a busy time for me, and I decided that it would be wisest to turn Snap off before I left, and then revisit the issue when I returned. Well I'm back, I've thought about the issue some more, examined the ways of reducing the annoyance factor and decided to bring it back- on a more limited basis.

I have chosen the minimalist option, so that the preview can only be triggered by mousing over the little icon on the right side of each link. It's a small icon, and so I'm quite confident that this will make it very difficult to trigger the previews unintentionally.

The other thing is that Snap has made it possible to stop the previews from ever showing again on your browser, whether on my blog or any other site using Snap - subject to the longevity of your cookies. Here's how to turn it off.

1. Mouse over the icon so that the Snap preview bubble appears.
2. Select "Options & Disable" in the top right of the bubble.
3. Choose "Bubble Disable for ALL sites"

The other thing is that the Snap previews never show if you read this blog through an aggregator or reader. Until this post, many of my readers would never have known that I once used Snap, then turned it off and then turned it back on.

Finally, I'm aware of the potential for widgets like Snap to slow down a site's load time. I will be careful when adding other widgets. I don't want this blog to be cluttered and clogged with widgets. But for consistency's sake, people should be just as severe about other widgets which slow down sites.

I must admit that I have taken this action with a lot of trepidation. I don't think I've ever seen such vehement hatred of any technology as some of the posts criticizing the Snap previews. Even Clippy and the <blink> tag received kinder treatment in their day.

It's hard for me to know whether the people writing anti-Snap posts were a broad representation of my readers, or a very vocal minority. At any rate, I'm not bringing back Snap just to be bloody-minded and annoy people deliberately.

I'm bringing back Snap because I think it adds something. What does it add? I'll explain that in the next two paragraphs. Does this good outweigh the possible negative reaction I'll get for using Snap? I'm not sure.

What I like about the link previews - that it takes some of the mystery meat element out of links. The preview is usually enough to give an idea of what sort of site is being linked to - whether it's another blog, or a news site, a corporate site or something else. For me it's enough information to help me decide if I'd like to click on that link now or later or never. These days the current trend seems to be about making our links as inconspicuous as possible. This leads to the sentence of links, where every single word is its own link. I'm not criticizing this, there's a certain elegance to it and I've done it myself on many occasion. It's no worse than the opposite [link to the University of Southern Queensland Library's Harvard Style - referencing online sources], which breaks the flow of the writing and can be distracting to the reader. My point is that the Snap previews seemed more like a middle ground between those two extremes of linking

There are two other things I liked about Snap - just small selfish things which would make my life as a blogger a little easier. First, the previews make it extremely easy to find broken links. Second, I'm thinking of expanding how I use this blog's companion blog, where I keep drafts, asides and rants at slightly arm's length from the main. The Snap previews would make it clear which of my links would be to the companion blog and which links would be to other sites.

Snap critics

I had ambitions of having a comprehensive post containing all the negatives and the few positives which have been said about Snap previews over the last couple of months, but I simply ran out of time. Here's a fairly representative critical comment:

All joking aside, SPA is not helpful, it's not cool, and it's not winning you readers -- It's bling, a silly little shiney thing designed specifically to increase awareness of Snap.com -- no bad thng, and certainly an shining example of how to use widgets to gain links and attention, but, come on ladies and gentleman, show a little self restraint, show a little consideration for your users. [David Krug's blog]

There's a lot more on Scoble's blog, when he announced that he was turning the previews off. When I last checked, there were 73 comments on this post, most of them critical of the Snap previews.

I really noticed the problem when the Librarian in Black - whom I respect and generally agree with - said that the Snap previews were driving her crazy and pleaded with other bloggers to stop doing it - with strong expressions of agreement from all commentors.