Snap Preview Anywhere
Snap Preview Anywhere is a tool that enables anyone visiting your site to get a glimpse of what other sites you’re linking to, without having to leave your site. If you are a reader of mine you should already know it because I use it in this blog.
I have just received an email from Snap Preview Anywhere Customer Service.
«Dear Website Owner,
About two months ago, we launched Snap Preview Anywhere because a number of websites had asked if they could use our website previews on their sites.
Little did we know that it would explode.
In just 8 weeks, over 30,000 sites worldwide have already invited us to be part of their sites. We’ve generated over 70,000,000 previews. And we’ve helped millions of your users get more from your site.
Now, thanks to your acceptance of Snap Preview Anywhere, WordPress, the company that powers so much of the blogosphere, has agreed to put us on 600,000 blogs! Read all about it.
Thank you–this would not have happened without you!»
Well, it seems that things are going well. Snap Preview Anywhere is currently used by many thousand of blogs including TechCrunch and Franciov Weblog ( 
), and it’s integrated in blogger platforms like Wordpress.com and Typepad.
«New ways to customize Snap Preview Anywhere.
Because so many people have asked about it, we’re now offering a number of end-user customization options directly from the Snap Preview Anywhere bubble, including:
* The ability for end-users to opt-out
* Changing the delay in how quickly the bubble appears
Plus, we fixed several bugs!
[…]
Warmest Regards,
Team Snap»
These are great new features, but I would like also the chance to set up the domain names for which I don’t want to show the preview. Previews are currently disabled for internal links and the only way to disable them for other links is to do that for every links, by adding the class “snap_nopreview” manually.
However I have just found out a useful plugin for wordpress to add Snap Preview Anywhere to your blog and customize it without laying a hand on code.
If you look for comments on SPA, you will find quite different opinions. Indeed Laurelle on Wordpress wrote a post in which she asked to Worpress.com to «please stop using Snap Preview». She considers these Snap Previews «a blight on the web. If you are using them, you are introducing a non-accessibility feature to your site that slows your site down and increases the bandwidth on the web as well as on your site. You are actually hindering your users.»
What do you think about Snap Preview Anywhere? I’d love to know your opinions too! 
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on Saturday, January 13th, 2007 at 4:12 am and is filed under Blogging, Wordpress, Web tools, Search engines.
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January 13th, 2007 at 4:20 pm
You do have the option to make links not use the Snap Preview Anywhere code, and then set only those links which are to use it, kinda the opposite to the standard set up.
Snap have a FAQ which details this at http://www.snap.com/about/spa_faq.php
A quick exert
“In the JavaScript code snippet added to your page, look for the query parameter ‘ap=1′ in the src tag and change it to ‘ap=0′. ”
For full details read the full item at
http://www.snap.com/about/spa_faq.php#n
I have the code set-up with my Blog, spent the first time I installed going through every link checking out the previews…the shine has worn off, but I still think it is a good idea.
I can see where people can get a little annoyed with it, and maybe it would help if there was the option for visitors to turn it off, which as the email you received from Snap infers, as more options are added, could be a reality.
January 13th, 2007 at 5:56 pm
I’m still undecided about whether to use Snap Preview Anywhere.
I like them, but I think I’d only use them on my ‘blogroll list, or something like that…
January 13th, 2007 at 8:41 pm
I gave Snap a try but the oversized bubble covers up the whole screen.. even thou I have 1024×768 resolution.
Also the thumbnails are too small to be of any use. You still have to click to go to the page and access the content.
If you really need to see before you click, get the cooliris extension for firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2207/
January 14th, 2007 at 3:50 pm
Carl, thanks for pointing that out. Anyway It could be annoying to add class “snap_preview” to each link you want to enable for the preview. I thought about a list of domain names (such as blogger.com for istance) to fill in the script. Keywords in amazon scripts are an example.
Wayne, you could try using Carl’s solution. I tried to put the “default” SPA on my Blogger Blog and I was disappointed for the result. Previews for “add a comment” are not useful at all!
ilker, thanks for the alternative solution. It could be useful to many people. However I use Camino, not Firefox.
January 20th, 2007 at 6:34 am
ahhhhhhh!!!! too much big brother…i want more annonymity
god soon enough i will be taking flights all over the world on a daily basis so that my blog postings cant track me!
January 31st, 2007 at 7:45 pm
just installed SNAP. will try out n see how. first view, mm.. kinda cool tho!
January 31st, 2007 at 9:30 pm
3 Reasons Why Snap Preview is Ruining Your Blog, and Hurting Your Readership
February 2nd, 2007 at 12:42 am
I’ve just removed the snap previews from this blog.