Lika Starr

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Update: SnapShots have been disabled on this site because they sold out. Yup, they added intrusive advertising to their site preview application. I may re-activate it at a later date but for now I am choosing not to use it.

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Snap Shots have been added to LikaStar.com

What is Snap Shots? It’s a nifty little program to aide you in your site viewing. When you see a link to an external site I have placed a small balloon icon next to the link. If you hover over this link a small preview window will pop up showing you a snapshot of the site. With this you get to see and even read some of the site.

Snap Shots lets you see ahead before actually clicking to see the site. So you can make the decision whether you’d like to visit the site or not. If you want to visit the site just click on the small preview window it will follow the link to the site. If you’d rather not visit the site just move your mouse away from the preview window and it will disapear.

Customization: Hover over one of the balloon icons next to an external link and let the window pop up. In the preview window you’ll see two small icons in the upper right hand corner. Either hover over the left icon shaped like a mechanical gear or you can click it. If you hover you’ll get two options, either ‘options’ or ‘disable’. Both of these really provide the same options. The only difference; the ‘disable’ selection highlights the disable option in red within ‘options’. If you click the gear icon instead of hovering it will take you directly to the ‘disable’ selection. All settings are configurable within the preview window so you are not taken to an external page.

Test the Snap Shots preview window with the link in this line.

Options within the ‘options’ selection: you can disable Snap Shots for this site or all sites. You can also set the delay time here, you can set the default view and the preview window size. There are also links to a FAQ page and a place to leave feedback for Snap Shots.

You’ll also find we use it for showing video on this site. It works a lot better than embedding code within the site and is pretty much automated.

Check out this video from You Tube.

When Snap Shots plays a video you have other options. The preview window will transform itself into a video player once the video starts playing. For a You Tube video you’ll need to click on the ‘play’ button in the center of the preview window to do this. You’ll notice a 3rd icon in the upper right hand corner, which is a close button. You’ll need this to close the player once the video starts. You can also move the player around the page so you can continue reading if you like while the video is playing. When you leave the page the player will close on it’s on. If you have tabbed browsing, you can continue listening to the video while surfing other pages as long as you leave the page open in one of your tabs.

The Zoom icon allows you to enlarge the preview screen and or video player which doubles the size.

Hint: If you want to watch videos in the larger view click on the zoom icon before playing the video. Otherwise clicking on the zoom icon after a video has started playing it will restart from the beginning.