Return, with a GIF

So much has happened in the last year. It’s almost exactly twelve months since I last published anything on this blog, although I have used it a fair bit for storage of writing. I have been putting off a return to traditional blogging, in as much I ever traditionally blogged, until today I had a thought. What if I just used my blog for silly things? Nobody is marking me for this blog. There will not, I hope, be a test. So with that in mind, and a potentially funny idea occurring to me during the day, I decided to bring the blog back with an animated GIF of all things.

The GIF shows my mouse cursor hanging out idly at the side of the screen as I browse Facebook. Then something quite unexpected happens when I move it slightly. (You will need to click to see it animate.)

The Perils of HoverZoom

Context for the GIF:
HoverZoom(dot net) is an extension for the Google Chrome browser that loads images when the mouse cursor is hovering over them, and shows them on the screen without having to click the link. It sounds very basic, but I found its functionality became a huge part of my web browsing over a relatively short time. It’s hard to describe just how much faster it feels not to have to open a tab and close it five seconds later (or less!). HoverZoom has been at the centre of some controversy recently, so I’ve been looking into alternatives like Imagus, but most importantly, I’ve been thinking about HoverZoom and its usefulness a lot. So while similar things have happened to me in the past, this one struck me as a perfect illustration of when it is not quite as good an extension as one might think.