Snap.com is a company that’s set out to solve a problem that doesn’t exist. When your mouse moves over a link on a website that uses Snap’s “Snap Preview Anywhere” technology, a small pop-up appears over the link and shows you a preview of the location that link leads to. These pop-ups look like the one shown here.
So what’s the problem? Well, think about how long it takes you to click on a link and decide to either stay on the site that appears, or head off to another destination. Mere seconds. Now, do you really need to see a tiny, barely legible preview before you click that link? I don’t.
Fortunately, you can rid yourself of Snap Preview Anywhere by visiting the Snap F.A.Q. and clicking on the link that reads “Click here to disable Snap Preview Anywhere”. Once you click that link, a cookie will be set in your browser to prevent future Snap Preview Anywhere pop-ups.
The Snap F.A.Q. notes that “you must refresh the affected pages or clear your cache for these settings to take effect”. Here are instructions for clearing the cache in a variety of browsers:
- Internet Explorer 4, 5 and 6: Click Tools → Internet Options, go to the “General” tab, and click the “delete files” button under “Temporary Internet Files”.
- Internet Explorer 7: Click Tools → Internet Options, go to the “General” tab, and click the “delete files” button under “Browsing History”.
- FireFox: Click Tools → Clear Private Data. Make sure “Cookies” is not checked. Press the “Clear Private Data Now” button.
- Safari: Click Safari → Clear Cache…
If you ever clear out your cookies, no matter what browser you’re using, you’ll have to revisit the Snap F.A.Q. and click on their link again to reset that cookie.
Preview Websites with Tabs or New Windows Instead
If you’re wary of clicking on a link because you don’t want to leave the originating website, here’s a hint: open the link in a tab or a new window. You’ll preserve the originating website while still following through on the link. In FireFox or Internet Explorer 7, hold the CTRL key while clicking on the link (CMD click if you’re on a Mac). Safari users can open a link in a new window by holding CMD while they click.
Source: “Disable Snap Previews on web sites” by LifeHacker
2 responses
January 31st, 2007
Interclue - Clever Link Previews · Articles says:
[...] Interclue is a Firefox extension that adds more information about a link when you hover over it. It’s not that annoying as the famous Snap tooltip and it certainly provides much more information about the page. As you can see in the screenshot above, you need to hover over a link, and then over the site’s favicon that appears next to the link. Interclue shows a preview of the page that includes most of the actual content, a thumbnail, information about the last update, the number of words, links, images, a tag cloud with the most popular del.icio.us tags. But the most impressive thing is that all this data loads almost instantly and it’s actually useful, especially when you want to judge the quality of a search result (including if it returns a server error). The preview window can be resized and dragged around, but it disappears when you move your mouse unless you lock it. [...]
January 31st, 2007
Link Previews With Interclue » D’ Technology Weblog: Technology News & Reviews says:
[...] Interclue is a Firefox extension that adds more information about a link when you hover over it. It’s not that annoying as the famous Snap tooltip and it certainly provides much more information about the page. As you can see in the screenshot above, you need to hover over a link, and then over the site’s favicon that appears next to the link. Interclue shows a preview of the page that includes most of the actual content, a thumbnail, information about the last update, the number of words, links, images, a tag cloud with the most popular del.icio.us tags. But the most impressive thing is that all this data loads almost instantly and it’s actually useful, especially when you want to judge the quality of a search result (including if it returns a server error). The preview window can be resized and dragged around, but it disappears when you move your mouse unless you lock it. [...]
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