Under The Sun

What is the point of Snap Preview? I thought we’d all agreed that uninvited pop-ups are intrusive, distracting, annoying and downright rude. Supposedly it gives the user the opportunity to decide whether the link is worth following, but since the Snap thumbnails are generally too small to read any of the text, all you can really preview is the colour scheme:  “I’m not going there– not with that shade of green…”.

When the little blighters started popping up on web sites all I wanted to do was GET THEM OFF MY BROWSER, not to actually look at them, so it was some time before I discovered that every Snap Preview contains a link to turn all previews off:

• click the “Options” link in the top right of the preview window
• in the options dialog, click “Disable Snap Preview Anywhere for ALL sites”

Relief — at least until you clear your cookies. You can also disable Snap Preview here.

Windows Live Writer is a WSIWYG (and rather wizzy) desktop blog editor. It works with most popular blog backend software, including WordPress. You just point it at your home page and it automatically detects the backend in use. I used it to post this entry, so it must work! (hat tip to Jordan Cooper).

Web zooms past 100 million sites from Guardian Unlimited: Technology
\”The 100 million site milestone caps an extraordinary year in which the Internet has already added 27.4 million sites, easily topping the previous full-year growth record of 17 million from 2005. The Internet has doubled in size since May 2004, when the survey hit 50 million.\”

5 Steps to Keep Your Kids Safe on the Web

#1: don’t put the PC in the kid’s room…

One thing that makes Firefox a viable alternative to Internet Explorer is, ironically, the “IE View” plug-in which lets you quickly switch to Internet Explorer for those sites that require it. This includes parts of the Microsoft site such as the MSDN Library and Windows Update, as well as sites that are just written by clueless programmers (getting fewer, thankfully).

The Firefox ietab plug-in goes one better by using IE to render web pages in tabs inside Firefox, which is really cool! As with IE View, you can specify sites that are always rendered using IE tabs. Now there’s no need to fire up Internet Explorer ever again!

Jakob Nielsen ses: Avoid Within-Page Links to avoid confusing your users.

I’ve started to find this myself, now that I use Firefox’s tabbed browsing. If I’m following a link and know that I’m going to return to the originating page, I open the link in a new tab — which is annoying when it unexpectedly loads another copy of the same page (especially if the page loads at a glacial pace). Perhaps we need a way of indicating links that are internal to a page.

Wired News: Christians Code Heavenly Games

Christians looking to provide alternatives to the sex and violence of video games like Grand Theft Auto are trying to attract some of the PlayStation generation with more wholesome fare.

Games as an educational tool are well and good, but a coincident post by Tim Challies strikes me as relevant. In Making Christianity Better or Rock N’ Roll Worse? he writes:

Too often it seems that God is treated as just another product. Children are unable to seperate Him from the other fads that sweep through their lives when they are young. Beanie Babies and Ninja Turtles come and go. For too many children, God does the same. As long as God is all the rage they are happy to acknowledge Him, but as soon as He goes out of style, they put him in a box like all the other fads. He ends up on the top shelf, along with the Revolve Bible-zines, the “Got Jesus?” shirts, the purity rings and the WWJD bracelets. God is thrown aside as just another fad.

The Podcast as a New Podium - New York Times