Hi, I want everybody's opinion on a question I have. The "Snap" module is a service by http://www.snap.com/ which helps us know about links to external websites. I have it installed on this site, and it is what makes the popup window that appears when your mouse hovers over an external link.
The intention for installing this is to give y'all fair warning before visiting an external website. The Snap tool not only informs you it's an external link, but if you're patient enough it gives you a screenshot of the web page. It should make visiting external sites a little safer.
My question for y'all is whether to keep this tool or to ditch it.
The problem is the Snap tool lengthens page load times on this site. It causes the download of two javascript files, and according to the tools I have available that download requires 1/4 second per page load. I just did a little test and with the Snap tool, doing several page reloads of Recent it took 1.7-2 seconds per page load. After disabling the Snap tool several page reloads of the same page took 1.3-1.5 seconds. I've since reenabled the Snap tool.
Therefore, disabling this tool should make the site feel a little faster.
Therefore, we have a tradeoff between page load times and functionality which might be desirable.
And for the purpose of this discussion I should mention another module I installed recently. The external links on the site now have little blippy icons next to them The little blippy icon warns you "This is a link to an external site" but it doesn't show you this popup and the screen grab.
I'm sorry, but what is this:
"Warning before visiting an external link"?
"Should make visiting external sites a little safer"?
What is this fear? How long have we been surfing the internet? Who here is afraid of external links, but will happily open up email attachments from China? Also note that the Snap tool doesn't show an image of my page anymore. I actually like Snap for its unique functionality, not as a security blanket.
Also, the little blippy icons - a nice idea. One per link would be good, three (in your sig) is excessive.
:)
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[b]AGM BATTERIES[/b]
ArcticFox, "How long have we been surfing the internet?" I dunno about you, but I've been surfing the Internet since 1987. In case you're counting that's 2 yrs before Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. Okay, so in Internet terms I'm an old fogie and I'm not too scared by things I meet on the Internet. But not everybody feels the same way, and there is a lot of fearism over the dangers. But like you said, I originally installed the Snap thing because it's rather cool, and it wasn't until later I thought "oh, having a preview of the destination is a good security move".
I've also noticed the external blippy link icon module does put a varying number of those icons and I've never figured out why.
Chuck, hmm, dialup, okay, it's been a long time since I did dialup, so the times I gave would be longer for you. In the old days, which you're still experiencing, we used to call this thing the World Wide Wait. The popup is supposed to dismiss itself when you move the mouse away, but you say it's not doing so?
- David Herron, The Long Tail Pipe, davidherron.com, 7gen.com, What is Reiki
David,
[b]AGM BATTERIES[/b]
davidherron.com
The blippy code puts the image at the end of any url that has http:// or www in it. In your sig, if you use this:
url=http://davidherron.com/]davidherron.com[/url
inside brackets, it will fix that. I don't know what the actual forum code looks like or I could see how to edit that part to fix it site-wide, but there's your start. :)
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