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One of the great UI features of FogBugz (in my opinion) is the CSS popup when you hover over a link to another case. I would love to see the same thing in the SO sites. There are many times when I would rather see a popup of a link to another question rather than following the link, or even opening a new browser tab to it. For those not familiar with FogBugz, the popup contains a preview of the content of the page that the link points to (not necessarily the entire page).

For those who don't like the popups, there could be an option to disable them that is settable in the user profile.

EDIT:
Here's a screenshot of the FogBugz popup. I think it's quite helpful as just a reference point. The popup preview of case 13789 appears when you mouse over the Case 13789 link. And again, it could be a per-user option since I know popups are not the most popular things on the planet...

In the preview I think it would be helpful to have:

  • Preview of the question and info on the original asker
  • Preview of the accepted answer, or if there isn't one a preview of the most upvoted answer or, in the case of a tie, the first posted answer with the most upvotes

FogBugz Popup Screenshot

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  • Can you post a screenshot? I'm not sure how well that would work.
    – Kyle Cronin
    Jul 21, 2009 at 15:20
  • I'm sure Jonathan Sampson is already hard at work developing the GreaseMonkey script for this
    – Gavin Miller
    Jul 21, 2009 at 21:44

1 Answer 1

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In my opinion it is hard to do it right (calibrate delay, make it appear fast, make it vanish fast, make it not obscure link), and if it is not done absolutely right it is [censored] nuisance. I don't know and didn't use FogBugz, but I hate, with passion, similar feature using SnapPreview on LiveJournal (e.g. http://gitster.livejournal.com/).

So I'd vote NO. This is web, not desktop application. The expectations are different.

Explanation:

  • There is delay (latency) because it takes part over the net. In the case of desktop application there is no delay.
  • In the case of web pages you expect to get information about target of link in status area. In the case of desktop applications you expect some help on mouseover for some element.
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  • Fair enough! And yes, that's the kind of popup I'm talking about at LiveJournal. I hate being forced to use them in the cases of BS advertising and as such am very much with you in that sense. But for reference to other questions I think it would be helpful here. I find it very helpful in FogBugz. Your passion is the reason I suggest it as a user option. Make it off by default.
    – squillman
    Jul 21, 2009 at 16:03

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