I’m generally not down with the self-referential posting, but I wanted to survey people as to how they felt about the new mouseover effect. I scored it (with some kind instruction) from Pericat at Unlocking the Air. I admired the way the mouseovers gave you contextual information about the hyperlink. On the other hand, as one reader reports, you may find them tremendously annoying.
So, what’s the popular opinion? Useful or lame? I’m more than willing to kowtow to the masses.
UPDATE: Thanks for all the feedback. I believe that we’re quorate on this topic. I’m going to restrict the fancy-fancy mouseover effect to the sidebar and those links whose destination may be obscure, unsafe for work or otherwise worth publishing metadata about.
DarrenBarefoot.com 
I like the mouseovers but it might become cumbersome if your post had a lot of links in it. Displaying some extra information about a link especially if the linked text is something like “this post” is a good thing; it would give me an idea of where I’m going to be taken.
Thumbs down on the link pop-ups.
Anyone else have problems with the comments here as white text on white background? Seems I often have to hightlight to read them….
I like the “tool tip” mouseover effect, but only if the pop up contains useful info. IMHO the current examples don’t really contain terribly interesting or useful info, I can get the URL by just looking at the browser’s status bar. So, a qualified thumbs up..
Oh, and I have weird intermittant problems with them too, where the background stays white sometimes..
Thanks for the comments so far. I like Matt’s approach–only using them when the destination is not implied by the text.
Jeff, I’ve never heard of problems with the comments before. What browser/OS are you using?
It’s a neat trick. Don’t know how useful it is, though, to be honest. Looks cool, but I have all the info I need already from the link title, itself. Or, I should.
But I’ll give it a chance.
-Augie
I liked it at first. But after awhile, I found that it negated the need to actually click on the links that were posted, which was something that I looked forward to before.
I think it helps for your Blogroll, but as for the links in your actual post, not so much. I liked your own descriptions and lead-ins to the links… am i making any sense?? oy!
Agreed, within the blogroll it makes sense, but for every outgoing link?
I prefer to choose within my browser what info to give for mouseovers. Definitely not something I want a page designer to choose for me.
tremendously annoying.
and “web goddess, apparently?” Bah! apparently my ass. 😉 I *am* a goddess! KNEEL!
Er, sorry. I get carried away. 🙂
Hmmm ….I am also not a fan of being labeled: “My Ex”, you MUST be able to describe me better than that! Though I like the little labels on a whole….
The blogroll ones are cool. But hamster? I don’t even have a hamster! (I used to have a gerbil, but he died.)
As with most things; good in moderation, bad in excess.
I don’t like ’em. They’re too big and opaque.
Darren, the image mouseover for your navigation does not work with Safari 1.1 (v100.1) on OS X 10.3.2.
I don’t like link comments in general. It breaks the natural flow of browsing.
Follow your muse, Darren. So long as you’re bringing me velvetize-ing links, it’s all just ducky with me.
I fail to see what purpose this serves that would not be better fulfilled with ALT text. It seems to be the same idea, only implemented in a non-standard way.
I don’t like them. They are not providing me with any new information that you couldn’t write in the description of the link. Redundant. Annoying. Make them go away.
I use both Windows 2000 Pro and XP Pro, in both cases – with IE 6.0 SP1. This seems to occur mainly on a few other pages as well – usually with moveable type comments.
The odd time I have to highlight text on your main page as well. Although – this happens infrequently.
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