First, the links: Why Snap previews are a terrible idea and how to disable them.
The downside to the recent widespread adoption of WordPress by Hebrew bloggers is that they’ve adopted on masse some of the worst eyesores of the global WordPress community, specifically an annoying bit of blog-bling that pops up (Pop. Up. doesn’t that already sound like a bad idea? Haven’t most browser advances since 1997 revolved around finding ways to disable and remove things that pop up?) a preview image of each website just as soon as you move your mouse over an external link. Not only is this annoying and distracting, it’s bringing you information you really don’t need at a time you really don’t want it. I mean, who cares what the site you linked to looks like? 99% of the time, it’s going to be another damn blog, using another damn bog-standard blog template.
Now, of course, annoying javascript widgets like this send any self-respecting geek scrambling for a greasemonkey script or even firefox add-on to disable it (user stylesheets, maybe? hosts file hacking?). Turns out there’s an opt-out option described in the FAQ of the company that provides this worthless “service” (it toggles a cookie from the snap.com site). Of course, it feels like a sissy’s solution. But the freedom from distraction is worth it. Update: I found a way to do this with greasemonkey.