it's not just grumpy old fartness, i swear

[sophiaserpentia]

So i'm seeing more and more links on LJ which include Snap Shots. These serve no discernible purpose other than bling. It's not like the preview you get of the page in question is readable, or is going to make any difference in whether or not you click the link. In fact, i find they slow me down, because they make me pause before clicking a link i was going to use.

[Poll #1081038]

Comments

[qilora.livejournal.com]

oh is *that* what that is called??.... i had wondered what the heck was happening with those little thingies, and wondered how it was supposed to help me at all (in desperate need of glasses!) when i couldn't really read what i was seeing anyway...

Jules & Co.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

No, i can't see any way in which they would be of help. I'm finding that a lot of people really hate them, they soak up resources and bandwidth, etc.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

Apparently, these things are really unpopular. Glad to know it's not just me being a fuddy-duddy. Found a link for a set of instructions that purportedly disable them permanently:

http://spacecowb0y.livejournal.com/281574.html

[orb2069.livejournal.com]

I think there's a way to disable them within the popup itself - At least, I remember fiddling with it for a second, find a disable link, then never seeing them again. I'd go and look for details, but... They're gone! :)

I think I'll add the blocks just in case, though. Can't hurt!

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

The comments here are telling. LiveJournal, using typical "due to positive response to our announcement!" corporatebabble, claims people were clamoring for this. No one can find any instance of positive user response. So someone else must have been responding positively. Users be damned. Anyway, here's the official way to disable them:

Go to http://www.livejournal.com/manage/settings/
UNCLICK Graphic Previews - seems to be the default personal journal setting thankfully, though it seems to default to ON in community posts.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

CONFIRMED - communities default to ON. Maintainers have to go in and change this. I disabled them in the communities i own, kyriarchy and the_pain_sutras.

[goldoyster.livejournal.com]

I found a way too, it was an x or options link, something like that, in the top right corner. Since then I've not seen them show up in any LJ at all, even in communities I don't belong to.

[herbgurl82.livejournal.com]

Those things are so irritating! Thanks for the link on how to disable them permanently. I thought I had gotten rid of them when I unchecked the box in my view options, but they were back this morning...

[kyeli-unlikely.livejournal.com]

I don't mind them, but they got annoying after a while, so I managed to turn them off. Don't remember how, though. (:

I don't think you're a fuddy-duddy. (:

Thanks for reminding me.

[guttaperk.livejournal.com]

http://news.livejournal.com/103674.html?thread=64949754#t64949754

[legolastn.livejournal.com]

I've seen this um, feature, on other web sites and kind of liked it, and only recently have seen it here and there on LJ, but didn't realize why. I can see why it might be annoying to some, but I've decided to give it a fair shake and see if I really think it enhances my web browsing experience.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

I think the concept has potential, so i worried that my negative reaction was simply a knee-jerk opposition to anything new. My objection would be assuaged if only the little pop-up gave something truly useful.

Mouseover links seem to be the new detritus on the information superhighway. The ones that show up in the text of email messages on Yahoo seem to be actually useful; however, when they show up under random words and phrases on various other pages (often with the text stolen straight from Wikipedia), they seem... i don't know, kind of alien, like the product of a non-human intelligence.

[guttaperk.livejournal.com]

Where the popup is able to convey useful, wanted information, sure; where the popup is clearly not useful (as in this case), or where the information is quite unwanted (e.g. most advertisements), no fair shake is required.

[legolastn.livejournal.com]

It's not yet clear to me that these pop-ups are mostly un-useful for me, since in some of the few instances I have seen them they have conveyed information such as "you really don't want to waste your time clicking on this link" or "this link is more interesting than it looks." The question for me is what downsides I experience and whether they outweigh any possible benefits. Some potential downsides to be on the lookout for being already outlined by Sabrina.

[cowgrrl.livejournal.com]

I was wondering what the heck those things were.

[sarahmichigan.livejournal.com]

My husband and I both hate them and have turned them off in our settings.

[pangaia93.livejournal.com]

They would be more useful if they included the link and maybe the page title, but the picture is unnecessary.

[pooperman.livejournal.com]

I was thinking they might be a way to pre-screen NSFW links, but I suppose the pop-up might well be just as NSFW as the link itself.

They don't bug me so much, but I can understand why some might get irritated.

[argentla.livejournal.com]

I find them very occasionally useful. A lot of times people post links with no clear suggestion of what they may be. Sometimes you can figure it out by looking at the URL when rolling over it (if it's a YouTube link or something like that), but if the URL is not familiar, it's handy. Actually USING the damned things is a little cumbersome because they may take a second or three to load, at which point you might as well click and click back.

I'm not opposed in principle (I like Windows Vista's conceptually similar rollover concept, where you can see a miniature version of a different application window by rolling over it on the task bar), but in execution I'm leaning towards "useless bling."

[kellcrow7.livejournal.com]

I'm too lazy to scroll down your pazillion comments to see if this was already posted *lol*, but LJ has at least given us an option in user pref's that will turn off the horribly annoying, beastly little things.
I don't know if it shuts them off for everybody or just the viewer, but I don't see them anymore on anybody's journals.

[nationelectric.livejournal.com]

I despise them. I think they're a usability nightmare -- they mess with my expectations of how links work, they slow my responses, they slow my browser, and they're inconsistently applied (default to off for journals vs. on for comms) so they *doubly* mess with my expectations. And, of course, they're virtually useless. What a stupid, stupid, stupid fucking thing.

But if sixapart is so absolutely hellbent on using them, give me an option in my settings that ensures that I never see them *anywhere*. Oh, sure, I can deactive them. On a per-browser basis. That's just great. I work on several different computers, with several different OS's, and several different browsers, and guess what? I keep coming across those fucking things. I told you assholes that I never want to see them again, so that means that I never want to see them again. If I'm logged in to my account, I should never see one. Not ever.

Seriously, learning that this kind of shit isn't good is the whole reason we had the late 90's.

God, those things piss me off...