You are not alone, Dave: I am not digging those popup preview windows at all.

They impede my read and don't add much to the mix.

Update: Doc rounds up some negative reviews and adds: "Please stop."

Comments

[sean coon]

i agree. it's as painful as clicking through bloglines to read your entire posts. (especially when they're 5 lines or less)

[David Boyd]

Right on.

[David Hoggard]

OK, ok...

Even though I installed the offending pop-ups, HoggsBlog is not immune to customer service issues. As a matter of fact, the customer is nearly always right and I am presently in evaluation mode.

I placed the thing into my code after seeing it used on some other local sites - and initially liking it.

It was convenient (and cool) that I could float over a link to an article and see the referenced page - especially headlines. However - after its initial coolness started wearing off (four days in, in the case of my blog), I'm tending to agree with all of the above. It is getting bothersome.

[Sue]

It can be turned off fairly easily if a viewer doesn't like SNAP windows. Tis only JavaScript.

[Ed Cone]

Even easier: stop reading sites that shove annoying popups in your face and that don't listen to readers when they say "please don't do this thing just because you can..."

[sean coon]

uhm, hello? not to go off-topic by one degree, but should i stop reading both sue and your blog because of the annoying forced click-through from my rss reader?

[Ed Cone]

You should read the blogs you want to read, Sean.

If a given site has annoying features but compelling content, you will probably still read it.

Marginal reads that make themselves harder to enjoy are the ones that will lose readers.

Most readers don't know what "forced click-through" means, or "JavaScript." They know what they like, though.

[sean coon]

i'm not talking terminology, ed, and the question wasn't personal -- as in, "give me advice." (nor was it meant to be terse)

anyone who subscribes to your feed (which is a good number of people) has to click-through post titles to read anything. not only is that an annoyance (my perspective, especially when you drop a brief post), but it turns your post titles into uber provocative ledes, which often fail to meet expectations.

are you thinking about driving uniques/total hits through to your blog when you made that decision? don't get me twisted -- there's nothing wrong with that answer -- it would fit perfectly with your public position on supporting local advertising.

just sayin', man.

[Ed Cone]

Seems like two separate issues.

I set my feed parameters when I set up the blog and haven't thought much aboutit since, although I know it's a hot topic for some folks. I don't really follow my blog via RSS, or worry much about hitcount...on the blogs I do follow via RSS, I tend to like short feeds and not to like multi-paragraph items in the reader window. But I'm open to suggestion from my readers.

[Sue]

That's funny, Ed. Thanks for making me laugh on Sunday morning.

[Ed Cone]

Sean, I checked my settings, which allow me to "Choose between publishing the full content of your posts or short excerpts in your feed."

I'm set for short excerpts, and that's what shows up at GSO101, which is one of the two places I see my feed; the other is Yahoo!, which shows a hed and popup excerpt.

In the past I didn't use headlines, but added them to satisfy feed-readers...don't know what I can do other than go to full-text feed. Full-text vs excerpt is one of those religious wars on the web in which I don't have a real ideological stake, just a personal preference.

[sean coon]

yeah, "short excerpts" shows up in bloglines (what me and 50 other people use to read your blog) or any other rss reader, shows up as the title and two first lines of the post.

when i first published my own feed, i received a bunch of emails from friends asking me to expand the setting to full. if i had advertising (or were trying to support local advertising on a meta-level), i probably wouldn't have acquiesced.

when i consult with businesses that depend on ad sales, i suggest that they post short excerpts to maximize page views back on the site while still freeing up content to be passively consumed.

so, in your case -- a high traffic blogger that supports local alt media ad networks -- your personal preference wouldn't cause me to stop reading. but it does affect my readership of lower-traffic blogs (as in the case with those annoying pop-up links).

thanks for the follow-up.

[Ed Cone]

I wouldn't overstate my ad-market-building motivation as a reason for limiting the feed. I like the market-dev idea enough to run the ads, but not enough to do much about seeking traffic...I just like the aesthetics of a reader with limited excerpts, and I like the idea of readers coming to the site itself so they can see the links, comments, etc, not just the text of a given post.