Snap to it

by admin on December 5, 2006

I’ve added an incredibly cool feature to this site. Snap Anywhere.

Any time you hover over an external link, you’ll see a balloon come up with a visual representation of the URL I’m referencing along with a natty search tool. You can still click on the link in the usual way.

This is one of the best ideas I’ve seen for a long time. For me it helps bring the site to life and gives the reader a more rounded experience. The only nit I have is that sometimes it takes a while for the image to load which is way too slow or most people. The way around this is to sweep the mouse across the link a couple of times.

If it becomes irritating then let me know and I’ll kill it.

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Tagged as: Innovation

  • http://www.sme-blog.net/ Philip Woodgate

    Ideal for the techie magpie – great stuff.

  • http://biztwozero.com David Terrar

    Hi Den,
    I tried this thing a week or so ago, but couldn’t figure out where to place the code to make it work in my template. Any advice on the best place gratefully received. (But it is rather slow)

  • alastair

    i have never been a fan of those hover pop-up type of things. Apart from the slowness thing they have an annoying habit of popping up at inopportune moments! Rather than hover I much prefer the choice of clicking, but an intermediate stage would be good for those sites that take for ever to appear.

  • http://www.accmanpro.com Dennis Howlett

    David:

    immediately before the tag if you can edit the header.php file or possibly index.php, depdning on your theme.

    alastair:

    you’re right of course but I wonder whether the aggro factor is worth overcoming? I don’t necessarily post the linked article title – in fact rarely do – this is extra information for the reader presented in a neat way.

  • http://biztwozero.com David Terrar

    Cheers Dennis.

    On some blogs I’ve seen, it works almost instantaneously. If it was like that, it would be really useful.

  • http://www.tomrafteryit.net/ Tom Raftery

    Saw this on TechCrunch first if memory serves.

    I don’t like it as it is unexpected behaviour and more likely to confuse rather than enlighten imho.

  • http://www.sme-blog.net/ Philip Woodgate

    I’ve added it to my blog for the posts only. Where it works instantly I think it is great, but where it is slow then I would rather not have it. The majority of links currently are instant on my blog. I’ll monitor it and if it remains the case I suspect I’ll keep it. That’s probably a personal thing – me I like pictures and graphics.

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