A picture’s worth a thousand words, right? So spice up those plain old text links with Link Thumbnail, the second tool from the arc90 lab.
What is this?
A little bit JavaScript, a little bit CSS and
a little bit clairvoyance, Link Thumbnail shows users that are about to
leave your site exactly where they’re going. When that curious mouse
pointer hovers over a link pointing to somewhere outside of your site,
the script displays a small image of the destination page. It’s a nice
visual cue that serves a very real purpose: providing a clearer picture
(no pun intended) of what’s ahead.
How Do I Use It?
Download the Code
Click on the icon below to download the source code for Link Thumbnail:
The file, linkthumb.zip, contains the script, one required image and an example page. Once downloaded, upload the script and the image to your site. They must be in the same directory.
Link to the Javascript and Add Style
Add a link to the javascript in the page(s) you’d like Link Thumbnail implemented. Remember to adjust the path to properly point to the location of the file on your server. Then, you need to a line of CSS code. You can copy this entire block and paste it into your <head> section:
<script language="JavaScript" type="Text/JavaScript" src="http://myserver.com/path/to/javascript/arc90_linkthumb.js"></script>
<style type="text/css" media="screen">.arc90_linkpic { display: none; position: absolute; left: 0; top: 1.5em; } .arc90_linkpicIMG { padding: 0 4px 4px 0; background: #FFF url(/tools/c/images/linkpic_shadow.gif) no-repeat bottom right; }</style>
Add Classes to Your Link Tags
Give a thumbnail to a link by adding the “linkthumb” class:
<p>Within this text, I can show a site image on an external link just by adding a class to my anchor tag.</p> <p>Here is an ordinary <a href="http://www.basement.org" class="linkthumb">basement.org</a> link.</p> <p>Here's a paragraph without a link.</p> <p>...
Give Thumbnails to All
Want all of your links to display thumbnails? No problem. Add the following line to your script headers:
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<title>arc90 lab | tools: Link Thumbnail</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" />
<script language="JavaScript" type="Text/JavaScript" src="http://myserver.com/path/to/javascript/arc90_linkthumb.js"></script>
<style type="text/css" media="screen">.arc90_linkpic { display: none; position: absolute; left: 0; top: 1.5em; } .arc90_linkpicIMG { padding: 0 4px 4px 0; background: #FFF url(/tools/c/images/linkpic_shadow.gif) no-repeat bottom right; }</style>
<script>arc90_linkThumbUseClassName = false;</script>
</head>
And now you don’t even need a class on your links:
<p>This <a href="http://blog.arc90.com">regular old link</a> will display a thumbnail.</p> <p>And guess what - <a href="http://lab.arc90.com">this one</a> will, too.</p> <p>Here's a paragraph without a link.</p> <p>...
Examples
You can see Link Thumbnail in action by clicking here.
Supported Browsers
Currently, the Link Thumbnail script has been tested and confirmed on the following browsers:
- Internet Explorer 6.0+
- Mozilla Firefox 1.5+
- Apple Safari 2.0
- Opera Version 8.51+
Licensing
This arc90 tool is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 license.
Discuss Link Thumbnail
You can send feedback on Link Thumbnail at the arc90 blog.