Snap Preview – Snap Off!
You may not be aware of your readers experience when you enable “Snap Preview Everywhere” on your blog. Here’s a brief summary.
(1) Keep in mind that 70% of those using the net are on dial-up service and that “snap” slows down page loading time whether or not the reader is on dial-up or broadband service.
(2) When surfing the web if your readers usually check the status bar along the bottom of their browser windows to see where the link is headed – “snap” takes that away.
(3) Although “snap” does give the option to the reader of “disabling” it this inconvenience also takes time and it doesn’t stick if your readers clear their cookies.
(4) It crashes Netscape 7.1.
(5) It doesn’t crash IE6 but the right click function is gone.
(6) In IE7, if you do a right click to open up a link in a new tab and “snap” pops up, then you lose the right click menu as well. It’s defaults to the image, not the link.
Suffice to say that many adjustments need to be made to “snap” and the best adjustment I can think of is to snap it off.
Watch out — here comes the Snap astroturfer…
Seriously. My name is Erik Wingren and I work for Snap. In fact, I’m responsible for user research and therefore I want you to know that some of your bullets above immediately go into what I relay to the rest of the Snap team when we plan enhancements and improvements.
That being said — your list has quite a few errors in it — honest mistakes I’m sure, but I still feel the need to clarify:
(1) Where are getting the “70% on dial-up” from? It is really hard to get accurate numbers for this and arguably each site has its own audience with unique technographics that the site owners should respect… but according to Nielsen//NetRatings US broadband penetration broke 80% in February 2007.
(2) Snap Shots does not “take away” the browser status bar display on IE6, IE7, Firefox or Safari. We have a bug logged for this issue on the Opera browser and we’ll fix it shortly.
(4) I did not know there are issues with Netscape 7. Unfortunately we can not support all browsers. W3schools tracked Netscape 7 AND 8 at a combined market share of 0.02% in Dec 2006 and they have since dropped tracking…
(5 & 6) Right click functionality works just fine in both IE6 and IE7 on my deskmates’ PC. To be sure I asked more people around the office and *no one* is having a problem. If you can repeat this experience I encourage you to send me your system details so we can track this down.
In essence: Snap Shots is designed to enhance the browser experience, not cripple it. We spend a lot of time making sure this is the case, but if we missed something we would very much like to know about it so that we can fix it.
Best Regards,
–
Erik Wingren
Snap UX Research
erik[@]snap[.]com
no idea why this is turned on by default. it should be an option to enable.
@eric
Here’s where I got the 70% from http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic.php?id=9153&page&replies=15#post-62808
But setting the figure aside my point remains the same.
(1) Keep in mind that there are those using the net who are on dial-up service and that “snap” slows down page loading time whether or not the reader is on dial-up or broadband service.
Here’s where the other points came (2) – (6) from
http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic.php?id=7850&page&replies=28
@engtech
I agree. Having it on by default seems counter-intuitive to me.
@timethief: thanks for the references. i hope you don’t mind if i link back here from those forums threads?
You have already linked back to this post from the threads on the forum and after having doing that you send me a comment and say: “if you don’t mind”. What an interesting approach.
I have to agree with TT’s sentiments. Turn it off.
My big issue with Snap Preview is that the thumbnail is so small that it’s pointless. If I want to look at the site, middle click or right click and open in new tab.
If I want to see WHERE the link is going, that’s what the status bar shows me.
Eric: TT is right. When viewing links on a Snap enabled blog at wordpress.com, the URL in the status bar is not visible. This MIGHT be something to do with the implementation at wp.com rather than the Snap Preview service.
I have Snap turned off in all my browsers on all my computers and I also agree with Engtech. This should be off by default, not “on” for wp.com blogs.
Not surprisingly we had another blogger today on the forum looking for instructions for how to turn it off.
To ewingren: I’m sorry, but I hate Snap. I hate it hate it hate it. And when I say this I say it not as a webmaster, but as a web surfer. I hate it for the same reason that I hate Intellitext.
I’m one of those people who like to use the mouse to follow what they’re reading. I randomly select text to make it stand out from the other text … I guess you could say I’m a hands-on reader, lol.
Snap, Intellitext and the like totally mess me up when I’m trying to read stuff! It’s a total pain in my ass that makes me want to read stuff on paper again. At least newspaper ads and info-boxes are off to the sides and can’t intrude into the actual text, lol.
I totally found this post looking for a way to turn it off in my WP blogs because I hate to subject my readers (all 2 of them, lol) to the same crap that makes me want to rip my hair out.
I’m sure you and the rest of Snap means well and all, but your product seriously needs to burn in hell. Seriously, lol.
I’m laughing so hard I can hardly type. Obviously, you and I are “birds of a feather”.
I’m glad someone’s laughing about my comment, since I was worried it came across as mean-spirited or angry or whatever.
I know “burn in hell” is pretty harsh, but I really don’t want to be too harsh, or in other words it’s not personal or anything. I know it’s hard to develop a product and spend all your time making it the best it can be, basically pouring your whole life into it and whatnot.
I just happen to view Snap and Intellitext the way some people look at cigarettes or pornography – as a blight upon the earth that must be eradicated, lol.
Not to worry. Bloggers express themselves passionately and I’m sure eric will take that into account.
Wow, you used a forum thread as a firsthand source? You may be interested in some high-quality reports I’ve made available for sale. They’re sourced by, umm… Wikipedia.
I recommend an elementary course in research methods.
Thank you for your interest, if not your courtesy. I’m a professional researcher.
And Wikipedia, in multiple tests, was found to be more accurate than existing reference texts, as well as more current, over 90% of the time. Errors deliberately introduced were corrected in an average of 15 minutes.
If you know who the individuals in that thread are, you will recognize their expertise. They are authorities. But you’d have to do your research to know that.