Although I am still a fan of Mr Snap (somewhat selfishly?), I do hope that you have disabled it on your browser—a simple process of clicking on “Options & Disable” when it pops up. And I will keep my ears open to my readership—enough thumbs turned down and I will be forced to act.

Incidentally, that’s a nice blog you are running—although what would I know about domesticity or fashion?—and I am grateful for your tips about writing and writer’s networks, with an only few-weeks-old blogging habit of my own.

To touch upon the topic of serendipity, which has recently made an appearance on these pages, I once also lived in a drafty farmhouse in Eastern Canada, an experience I didn’t enjoy particularly at the time, but which has certainly provided me with a wealth of material for for future writing. Here is just one story: Cooking lessons.

Just to respond to Erik’s points first:
“- Is your audience *exclusively* made up of experienced Internet users that read your blog using browsers that support tabbed browsing (essentially IE7, Firefox, Opera or Safari)?”

Since IE7 is what Microsoft is making available to all XP owners, it would be surprising if your audience didn’t quickly consist of lots of IE7 users. Whether they’ll use tabbed browsing is debatable. But tabbing isn’t the key here. Lots of people read by following a link, and if they don’t like it, there’s the back button. Snap Preview doesn’t tell you enough to inform the decision, I’d suggest.

“- Are you *not* interested in attracting and retaining readers that doesn’t fit this narrow user profile?”

Unpacking this double negative, we get “do you want to have readers beyond those using tabbed browsers?” Of course you do – but do you need what is in effect a pop-up, which educated and uneducated users alike dislike, or are there effective tools already in browsers?

- Are your hyperlinks blue and underlined?

If they’re not, then you’re unlike millions or billions of sites, and you’re breaking a fundamental of usability, and you should change your stylesheet at once so that they are.

- Do you consistently follow“proper” markup protocol, defining the target and title of the link within the opening and closing of the anchor tag?

Most people don’t – but as they become more experienced at writing links, they learn to use descriptive phrases. Until recently, the Google search on “miserable failure” illustrated how.

Overall, the case against Snap Preview is that it’s like a pop-up and it tells you little that you couldn’t learn by looking down at the status bar, where on most browsers the “go to” link’s URL will show up. It’s the pop-up part that people find trying.

>> …In the UK the Guardian is not exactly top of the list in the readership polls anyway, but knowing what *is* at the top is not terribly comforting either…

I don’t know what “polls” you’re referring to (there’s no such thing; there are sales, readership, and website visitors/pageviews). The website is the most-read of the UK newspapers.

The score is currently 3-2 in favour of Snap.

Ursi used snap preview for several weeks. On his blog he then had a poll 75% of people voted to get rid of it so he did. Nice blog by the way.

While not normally being one to enter into arguments over particulars, it seems that Snap’s comments here don’t quite qualify as“astroturfing,” as they have been up front about owning the opinion, revealing themselves as the actual author as opposed to falsely engineering grassroots support via proxy. Rather than astroturfing, it seems they are arguing their own case at the grassroots, one site at a time.

I was concerned at first that I would alienate all the visitors like snapsucks currently speeding towards my site, but am now more than prepared to be a contrarian—until genuinely convinced otherwise. I’m not a fan of forming opinions through sheer weight of numbers or yelling voices, or (now) through the pages of the Guardian, and while you could argue that it smacks of sensitivity, desperation or both, I admire Snap for descending into the volatile, mostly arbitrary world of online opinion to argue their case, one site at a time.

another godawful one is Intellitxt , which again does a popup when you mouse hover over a link

http://www.intellitxt.com/

errrghh..

And when I get around to adding the “disable snap” button option to my site template, in the interests of usability/choice, I really can’t see what anyone could complain about.

Personally I care more for an educated user than the“clicking masses,” but having said that an educated user will surely know how to disable snap if if that is their preference.

I guess I’ll soon find out if that is not the case.