Idea for the web: Hover over a link, see a small preview of the linked page

[dgurney]

Sometimes I hesitate clicking on a link because I don't know what the resulting page will look like - it's a leap of faith. So here's a potential solution: If I hover over a link for about 500ms (just like hovering over a username on Facebook), I see a small modal popup displaying a thumbnail of the resulting page. It would be trivial for Google to implement this in Chrome.

More context, happier browsing.

[mikecane]

This already exists. A lot of WordPress blogs use it (I think WordPress might have acquired the company that created it). I have disabled it on my WordPress(dotcom) blogs because it's just a PITA. It takes too long for a preview to be created and it blocks the blog -- which is an issue if you accidentally run your mouse over it (like those stupid popup Share buttons all over the place now).

EDIT: I've done a screensnap to show you what it looks like in my WordPress Dashboard for Comments (where I apparently cannot turn it off): http://mikecanepics.wordpress.com/2013/01/05/site-preview-in...

[nodata]

What's the advantage? This would only end up favouring websites which look good as thumbnails. Websites with killer content will not gain anything.

[Giszmo]

Uhm, I hover to not trigger outbound traffic and check the actual url of the link before I click. Wouldn't want my browser to try and render a page that I didn't even click.