I removed Snap’s previews from here

Here’s another complaint about that snap thing: the sites I already visit show an image, which is pointless because I already know what they look like. But the sites that are less popular that I haven’t heard of, which would be the most useful to have the preview going, have a blank square saying snaps hasn’t got the image for.

So what is the point of this thing again? To show us pointless thumbnail images?

I think Snap’s auto opt-in has a value in general, but not for what they do. Can’t say more.

Power users, adblock this : http://spa.snap.com. Problem solved, not just for all WordPress blogs (apparently WordPress’s founder allows the blog owner to switch off the Snap add-on) but also on every other site on the planet.

Phew!!! Thanks

Good move. I hope others follow suit. I see Snap on lots of blogs and it’s awful! What a terrible “service”. Glad you finally got rid of it! Better late than never!

annoying but sometime it looks cool..hehe

Add my thanks to the pile – the first time I saw Snap was at Techcrunch. Neat for the first 2 milliseconds. Who CARES what the page LOOKS like that the link refers to? I mean, really, WHO cares what it LOOKS like? It’s about the content, not visuals…

Someone asked about disabling it on a WordPress.com blog

You can do it in Presentation/Extras.

I find SNAP intrusive, annoying, and pointless.

The only good use I’ve seen for a preview is on a video sharing site that when you hover over the link it shows you the first frame of the video. Other than that use the preview thing is annoying a slow. DIAF SNAP

Thank God, someone finally listened.

I’d hate to be in their shoes right now. So few people like their widget.

The only good use I’ve seen of it is hovering over an image preview to see a larger version of it.

If you have a tendency to read blogs as their published it’s doubly useless because the preview is never there.

Resounding applause! I saw the note on Dave Winer’s blog where Matt Mullenweg commented about reactions to Snap! separating the geeks from the users…and was a bit offended by it. Snap has to be the most distracting and useless (well, maybe not as useless as Twitter) plug-in I’ve ever seen. You just made my user experience tons better.

I agree. I’ve removed it too. It’s nice, but it doesn’t add real value to my blog, juts slows it down.

I’d like to add my voice to the chorus of THANK YOUs for ditching Snap. I dislike using the mouse, so I use Opera’s excellent keyboard navigation system to move around web pages, which partly works by using navigation components of a web page. Except, whenever that web page was yours and the navigation component was a link, the Snap preview would pop up, take ‘focus’ and intercept any attempts to move away from it! Very irritating.

Anyway, good decision, and good blog!

THANK YOU! Interesting service but terrible implementation.

C’mon guys, give the service a break.

IMHO, anyone NOT liking it is not understanding the true meaning of being a blogger. Blogging is as much about posting information as it is linking to other sources (no need to tell Robert about THAT one!).

The service enabled me to look at blogs that with a standard text link I may not have bothered looking at.

Maybe the execution could be improved? How about a “Snap Certified Blog” icon which demonstrates to users that by hovering over the link for a period of time would trigger the link window? Can the code be set to pop open the window after a LONGER period of time?

Great idea and particularly relevant to the linking theme of the last few days. Anything that encourages people to respect the content of others by linking is a good thing for me.

Good move, can’t see what they can do to improve it, it’s just a bad idea in the first place.

I did too. I read all the comments, and I agree. So I ditched it also.

Rex

Actually, a lot of the upset over Snap is jealousy. Why did I think of that!? If it didn’t have a logo, probably would be fewer complaints.

Hardly. It forced me to care about where my cursor was so I didn’t accidently have some pop-up block what I was reading. You’re misspelling “annoyance”.

think Snap’s auto opt-in has a value in general, but not for what they do. Can’t say more.

“auto” opt-in? That’s um…that’s what is normally called “opt-OUT”. See, when you have to take action for it to STOP, that’s an opt-OUT system. There’s a difference.

The service enabled me to look at blogs that with a standard text link I may not have bothered looking at.

In a bloody inch square? What, precisely, did that tell you about the link?

I got rid of SNAP windows a couple of days ago; it’s true: most readers didn’t like them. I thought they were great and easier than looking a link to find a PDF or some such nonsense. But the other day, there were too many “waiting to load” windows and it started bothering me, too, so POOF! and they were gone. Suggestion to SNAP folks: there is an old JavaScript thing that lets you choose to open links on the same or a new window that you can code into a blog. They should provide a similar feature: turn SNAP off by default and let users turn it on if desired.

I’d turn it on. I like the choice. How about it?

Thanks from over here too – I can’t stand things like that that pop up and cover other things. Maybe if they were transparent – but probably not.

@47: John

I can’t disagree with you on the whole John, but it has some use. If on first glance, the Snapshot makes a blog look fairly good, I would probably give it a look.

Personally, the appearance of a blog says as much about the content as the content itself (although others would argue that the appearance attempts to hide a lack of quality content…like mine!!) so it is important for me to gauge credibility form looking at a preview of the page.

That said, involuntary pop-ups died when Firefox came out so why all go back to it???

I add my thanks as well. I tend to avoid sites that employ that irritating behavior, which is what I consider the Snap preview.

Tool-tips such as the service IntelliTXT from http://www.vibrantmedia.com/ (i.e., used at http://www.activewin.com )are just as irritating.

Although it may not be the case now, but ASAP (Alliance of Security Analysis Professionals, see http://asap.maddoktor2.com/charter.html ) found tool-tips directed to malware installation sites. Both the MVPS Host file and IE-SPYAD list that URL of vibrantmeida.

I think I’m not as bothered with Snap as some people, only because I don’t link that often.

I love it, personally.