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List:       kde-look
Subject:    Re: Idea for tool preview on mouseover...
From:       Dave Leigh <dave.leigh () cratchit ! org>
Date:       2002-03-06 19:54:09
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On Wednesday 06 March 2002 13:01, Sean Pecor wrote:
> Hello,
>
> On Wednesday 06 March 2002 12:34, Friedrich W. H. Kossebau wrote:
> > But what would be the best solution? The changed cursor? Preview of the
> > tool/app? Or don't you think this is useful but causes to much optical
> > noise?
>
> Good idea.

I agree it's a very nice idea.
Opera addresses the issue by using a tooltip to display the link information 
rather than placing it in the statusbar. This way your eyes don't stray. I 
think more could be done, though.

> I think that the best solution would be some form of discovery tool that
> retrieves the content of each link in the page, and then renders a caption
> based on the contents when you do a mouseover. You could then go even
> further with leading edge functionality like:

Ooh. Slow... dog slow. It's always a disappointment when you hit a 404, and 
not the least because you've wasted time getting the message (sometimes a 
CONSIDERABLE amount of time, even over a fast cable connection like mine). 
Pages take long enough to load by themselves... I'd hate to slow it down 
further by retrieving information, much or most of which you're NOT going to 
use.

It's even worse if you hold off retrieving the information until you need it 
(i.e. hover over the link). Then you're either going to wait for it or more 
likely do without. The situation is similar to those pages where the graphic 
changes on mouseover... usually not a problem, but with a complicated graphic 
or a slow connection it's onerous (which doesn't stop people from designing 
sites like that anyway). The reasonable solution would appear to be to 
retrieve every link on the page, but give priority to the one you're hovering 
over.

However, I think there's enough information in the HTML to improve things 
significantly without having to go out and retrieve every link. You've got 
the link name and caption, and can tell if it's an image or a page, what the 
reference is, and whether it's going to require a pop-up window or perhaps 
run some Javascript. All of this is arguably more important within the 
context of the currently displayed page than knowing what the contents of the 
next page are. That's what the anchor text is there to tell you.

> This functionality would increase the bandwidth usage of the user, so it
> would need to be used with care. For example, I'd get bummed as a web
> developer if a feature like this were screwing up my session activity logs
> (because I'd think the people were visiting more pages then they actually
> were). But overall I think the good would outweigh the bad for many
> applications.

I'll have to withhold judgement until I think of a really good reason for 
using that bandwidth. Right now I can't think of one. The reasons we both 
cite above are good ones for not doing it.

-- 
dave.leigh@cratchit.org
http://www.cratchit.org

The UNIX philosophy basically involves giving you enough rope to
hang yourself.  And then a couple of feet more, just to be sure.

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