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October 19th 2006
(0) WebSnapr, Wordpress Plugin
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Unobtrusive JavaScript seems to be all the rage lately with the likes of moo.fx, reflection.js and now WebSnapr. I was pointed to this service via Digg.com and I really like it so I’d thought I would share it with you. WebSnapr, as you can tell by the name, sells itself as a “Web 2.0″ service and provides a service that generates thumbnails of websites for you in (near) real time. It’s already been implemented into a Wordpress theme by XSBlog, for which I’m thankful.
The Wordpress plugin takes provides two options: make all the links popup a thumbnail or use a CSS class to select which links you use the service with. And remember, this uses an external service to generate the thumbnails so if that has high traffic or goes offline, no images will load. At the moment the plugin features no check to see whether the service is working or not. The plugin works seamlessly and provides an options page in the administration area.
Although WebSnapr doesn’t employ a relatively new idea, it does implement it in a new way. Unlike the program I have on my server to generate a full-size image of an entire webpage, WebSnapr externally generates a small thumbnail of the website so users can see what the link looks like before they go to it. I like this idea not only because it looks really nice on any page layout, but because it’s unobtrusive and is easily implementable on almost any platform. Check it out and implement it!