Snap Preview – Oooh Sparkly!
Nick Wilson at Performancing.com has a review of sorts of the new Snap feature everyone seems to be using. I couldn’t agree more.
3 Reasons Why Snap Preview is Ruining Your Blog, and Hurting Your Readership
Its intrusive, obstructive and unuseful in almost every respect and use case. The fact that so many big blogs are using it, big well respected blogs, does not mean that it’s useful, it just means that they, like most bloggers, have all the self restraint of a magpie in a sparkly things factory.
As a rule I try to stay away from graphic design fads, too much “here today gone tomorrow” for me. Web design fads are even worse. One day you’ve never heard of something, the next it’s on every site you look at. Shortly there after it’s nowhere to be seen, and everyone is denying they ever used it.
I always try for a more timeless style. Sure, it may not be the biggest and best technological marvel of the age, but I won’t have to rebuild it tomorrow to stay on top either. I don’t have anything against the idea of Snap Preview, I just think it’s just being over utilized. It’s graphic design equivalent is glossy paper. Sure my layout sucks, and the logo is horrible, but I put it on shiny paper!
Update: Willmacc at A Daily Rant, has found something interesting about the bots behind Snap: Something Odd « A Daily Rant.
TypePad users have the option of an easy intall of Snap (yay, widgets!), but I didn’t bother. I think it’s far too distracting, and the preview doesn’t do anything for me when I’m going to click the link anyway.
IOW – you’re right! LOL
;-)
– Kat
http://www.CatHouseChat.com
Comment by Kat — January 31, 2007 @ 7:04 pm
I ran my cursor down the sidebar (perusing the links) of a site that I didn’t realize had Snap installed the other day. All of those flashing pop-up link images, I thought I’d had a stroke.
Comment by HDW — January 31, 2007 @ 7:46 pm
I’ve heard the debate over and over again, but I’m going to keep it. Fad or no fad, the service works very similar to tooltips, only with images. I think it’s here to stay and will evolve into more than just a preview in the future.
Comment by eric hebert — February 12, 2007 @ 9:21 am
I don’t like the way it’s been mass installed without thought to the consequences. I can see how using it in some limited and controlled way could have great potential. Installing it however, on a blogroll of hundreds of sites is just ridiculous. I look forward to seeing what it becomes in the future.
Comment by HDW — February 12, 2007 @ 9:29 am