Haters Of Snap Preview, Join Us.

First, let me say that I have all the respect in the world for the people who create startup companies, the programmers, the entrepreneurs, the risk takers.

But snap preview really sucks, and somehow all these great companies and services have been blinded by how much these things really suck, and have started to add them to their services.

I just hate it.

Snap previews suck.

As Chris Clark notes: "Snap preview sucks mule testicles." (It's in the comments actually.)

Snap previews are these annoying javascript preview boxes that pop up when you hover over a link. They've started to appear on many popular sites (including Vox, LiveJournal, Techcrunch and Wordpress.com), and are provided by a company called snap.com (link condom applied).

Everyone I know hates these things, yet somehow these respectable brands have decided to annoy their users with these things. And I can only conclude the Snap people must be doing something to convince these companies to put something so blatantly user-unfriendly on their sites.

The "regular people" argument.

Anil Dash repeats it here: that somehow regular people like these previews. Now, I've been around the usability block a few too many times to buy this. The "regular people" argument tends to go down well with geeky types, because deep down inside, they feel they're not regular people. They're somehow different (better, perhaps). "Your mom" might like it.

In reality, snap previews are 99% bad.

Now, this is not to say that geeky types can't get blindsided by their geekyness - it happens all the time. But your instincts are also good: AOL was a closed garden, "regular" people might have "liked" it, but we knew it wasn't gonna last. Snap preview just sucks, and usability wise it breaks all the expectations that have been built up over years of internet usage and millions of sites about what a link really is and how it behaves.

Sure, you'll find some users who might say they "like" it - I've heard users say they like popup windows.

Snap previews breaks user expectations of how one of the most basic building blocks of the internet works. It's not easy to use. It doesn't "improve" the web. It doesn't "improve" the link. It just annoys the hell out of loads of people, and mildly annoys loads of other people, while making you a little bit of cash. Don't sell your soul.

Snap previews are the new popup ads.

This sums it up: "I’m not expecting anything because I’m not doing anything to cause something to happen. Simply moving my mouse and not clicking should not cause something to happen. The behavior is very similar to pop-up ads."

Snap previews trigger when you mouseover with your mouse. Now, there are a lot of us that like to mouseover links. We don't expect something to pop up. We don't want something to pop up. Hell, we can get damn annoyed when something pops up. And we're your "users". You don't want us annoyed.

The "you can turn them off" argument.

You know this is a fake argument. I'm not even gonna explain why. Defaults matter.

Figure this one out for yourselves.

The "they're a useful preview" argument.

Sigh.

These blisters are being sold as providing something useful. A preview that helps you decide whether to click the link. Well, let me tell you something: we already have a preview mechanism that helps you decide which links to click. It's called anchor text! Unless your website consists of nothing but "click here" links, of course, in that case you might want to install those Snap things anyway. (And the back button? Ever heard of that?)

Check out this story:

"One nearly blind friend told me of her horrible first encounter with the Snap Preview. She uses her mouse to track what she is reading, moving it along with every word she slowly reads. She refuses to be “read to” by the Internet, wanting to use her eyes to the very last moment she can. When her mouse moved over the link, it became a graphic. Because it was out of her small circle of vision, when she got to it, she thought it was a graphic so scrolled down to the next line to read, thinking the text would wrap around the image as usual. It didn’t. She moved away before seeing the pop-up window go away and was totally lost in the content and confused. She went back up and experienced the same thing again. She finally closed the page, thinking it was a mistake on the part of the writer who put a graphic over their text and never got the point of the page she was reading."

So, what can you do?

Since a lot of big sites are adding these things on our blogs and pages, I think something needs to be done.

  1. Complain. This is the most effective thing you can do. Startup companies really do listen to their customers. If they notice some kind of backlash, they'll think twice. Email support of all the services you use that use Snap. Tell them what you think.
  2. Blog about it. Spread the word.

That's it. Remember, Snap preview sucks mule testicles.