WebShotsPro came up with a pretty cool JavaScript package that you can add to your site which lets users see a small thumbnail of your hyperlinks. It is actually really cool and the best part is that you won’t have to provide the extra bandwidth needed to do it all! They host the JavaScript themselves.
Once you insert their JavaScript into the header on your site the only thing left is to format your hyperlinks like this:
<a href="http://www.webshotspro.com" class="screenshot">WebShotsPro</a>
It is nice that they have you implement it this way because you can pick and choose which hyperlinks you want to have the thumbnail. I thought about implementing it on our site but I already have a little too much JavaScript and I’m trying to minimize the amount that I use. Otherwise this is so simple to do and it is an amazing feature that is sure to impress many of your visitors!
Is it me or doesn’t Firefox support this trick?
It worked for me in Firefox 2. Maybe you have NoScript installed or you have Javascript disabled.
It worked for me in Firefox 1.5x. However, I really do not see a big use for it as the image is too small to really see anything.
If you wish to minimise the amount of JS used in your site Ryan, I suggest removing that preview thing – the preview shown looks nothing like the final message (different styling) and if you’re a registered user your name won’t even appear. Unless people need reassurance that the tag buttons (which, incidentally, are broken as well) work then there’s not much point to it. Just my two cents – it’s cool the first time one sees it though I suppose.
Maybe you’re right about the whole preview thing. I never really use it either…especially since user’s can edit their own comments.
Exactly – with logins and editing it really doesn’t serve a useful function – and the code for it is pretty big.
Okay, I disabled it so hopefully it will lead to faster page loads. I’ll have to watch to see if anyone notices.
Notice what..:idea: oh no more preview…nice that was kinda annoying at least to me…