UPDATE: Paul Conroy has created a simple method to disable hovercards. You can grab it here.
What are Hovercards? Twitter explains:
“Hovercards are cards which appear when you hover over a username or avatar. The cards display additional information about the person and allow you to interact with them while staying within the context of your page.” Here’s what that looks like:
I’ve been hearing from a lot of people that this feature is nothing but annoying, that Twitter only developed it to use on non-Twitter.com sites, and that it should be optional on Twitter.com. Leave your comments below as to what is wrong with this feature and I’ll add them to this post.
@helpanelephant says it best:
“Hovercards are awful. They get in my way, often covering adjacent posts as well as the one they come from. I often encounter them accidentally when trying to copy a nearby tweet. There isn’t any way to make them go away, and they can hang there forever.
“Visiting another user’s page to follow or unfollow them isn’t that onerous. I want to see their page and their timeline anyway. If you don’t want to lose your place on your own page, just right-click and open in another window or tab. At a minimum, Twitter needs to put a “close here” on the hovercard, but I’d prefer to get rid of them altogether.”
Reasons Twitter’s Hovercards are annoying and should be disabled or let us opt-out of seeing them:
- They popup unexpectedly, blocking the actual message suddenly while we are reading it.
- They prevent fast clicking the username
- Sometimes they STAY popped up, semi-permanently covering what we’re trying to read.
- You can no longer highlight and copy user information.
- They pop up unwanted sometimes when trying to copy a nearby tweet.
- The additional resources to instantiate hovercards may be slowing down the page.
- Twitter.com is most useful as a simple way to read messages. Hovercards break this primary feature.
- It’s already easy enough to view someone’s profile. You can just right click on the name and open their link in a new tab.
- Mouseover popups are the bane of the internet, penalizing not just accidental but also normal mouse movements. Hovercards are a prime offender.
{ 31 comments… read them below or add one }
This feature is nothing but annoying.
Annoying feature!
Too much info in your face.
Ban the hovercard!
#haikuchallenge #ban #senryu
These hovercards were useless and annoying.
with all of the hidden mouse over events it is becoming increasingly annoying to even move my cursor across or around on my screen. please stop the mouse over popup behavior.
I’d love to opt out of this useless function. They pop up and STAY popped out, and I can’t figure out whether hovering over them, clicking on them, clicking somewhere else, or offering a roast turnip to Enkidu will get rid of them. Sometimes nothing will. Then I can’t read the actual tweet.
I don’t like them too and agree with most comments: annoying, useless, and they prevent fast clicking the username. I like Twitter because of the simple way to read messages, not to view some kind of profiles. Please keep it as simple as possible!
I like the hovercards because they let me see if I’m following someone without clicking to their page. Yeah, they can be a pain sometimes–like it you are trying to copy and paste some text, but I prefer Twitter with them than without them.
I like them b/c I can see quickly if I am following and I can DM quickly. Please bring them back
I like the little cards because you can choose to follow someone or unfollow someone easily without losing your place in the thread. Please keep them.
OMG please give us the option to opt out. So annoying.
Don’t care if they keep them but definitely wish could opt out of having to put up with the annoying things.
If I’m interested enough to want to see someone’s profile, I just right click on the name and open their link in a new tab.
Opt out or don’t bring them back. I always want to see a profile to read prior tweets to judge if I want to follow or follow back anyway. You can already follow them at their profile. Same problems as others such as stuck hovercards or accidental mouse overs that block the messages I want to see. The extra API surely is what caused their servers to slow done and fail the day they instituted mass deployment also.
Hovercards are awful. They get in my way, often covering adjacent posts as well as the one they come from. I often encounter them accidentally when trying to copy a nearby tweet. There isn’t any way to make them go away, and they can hang there forever.
Visiting another user’s page to follow or unfollow them isn’t that onerous. I want to see their page and their timeline anyway. If you don’t want to lose your place on your own page, just right-click and open in another window or tab.
At a minimum, Twitter needs to put a “close here” on the hovercard, but I’d prefer to get rid of them altogether.
The hovercards are very irritating. They block the tweet making difficult to read until they disappear. Please tell us how to disable them!
Dearest Twitter,
PLEASE give us the option of turning hovercards OFF if we don’t like them…or just don’t bother fixing the current issue you’re having because mine aren’t working now and I LOVE it
Love,
Anastasia
Just one more reason to use a standalone application fro twitter like: tweetie, tweetdeck, seesmic, and the like.
Unfortunately Twitter seem to have fixed the hovercard issue now!
After being annoyed by them once too often (particularly #3 above, obscuring other tweets), I put together a simple bookmarklet you can run when logged on to twitter.com which will disable all of the hovercards. At least until twitter give us an option in settings to disable them!
You can grab it here – http://www.conroyp.com/2010/03/20/decluttering-twitter-part-deux/. All feedback, comments and suggestions for improvement are welcome through the comments form there!
Paul
GET RID OF THEM!!! I HATE THEM!!! Thank you very much for this app to disable them!
Awwwwww, yeah!
I agree that the hoverboards are irritating. When I try to copy things, it pops up. Sometimes they just pop up randomly. I don’t even want to read the information on them, because I’m just trying to go to their page, where I will see that info anyway.
Always irritating, never useful.
I think the feature is brilliant, sorry to disagree!!
I don’t mind them. I don’t understand why people are saying they last for ages… mine disappear a second or two after I roll off them, doesn’t affect my usage that much.
I want it ALL~!! I would like to keep them with the option to uncheck a box in settings that would deactivate the hovercard temporarily. They are super handy for the follow/unfollow/view profile/DM, but they get in the way for copy/paste.
If I HAD to choose keep or not, I would choose keep. I really believe it can be an optional check box.
Anita @ModelSupplies
Oh YAY~! That’s the UPDATE~!!! w00t~!!! Paul Conroy ROCKS~!!!!
x0x
Anita @ModelSupplies
I hate the hovercards! They get in the way of things!
-Oli
(http://theorlandoguide.net)
‘doesn’t affect my usage that much.’
I don’t want my Twitter usage to be affected at all. The Twitter page has become so cluttered with unnecessary additions. Twitter used to be fast and breezy – now it’s slow and clunky.
On the contrary, I love hover cards! Makes it easier for me to follow tweeps and also to check if am following someone or not. Maybe twitter can provide a preference option to switch it off though.
cxeers
@anshprat
So glad I’m not the only one who can’t stand the hovercards! They block my reading of my tweets and there’s no good way to get rid of them. I don’t think I’ve ever once actually found them useful. They should be optional (as was mentioned, maybe right-clicking to make them appear would work — that way, they’d only show up when the user actually wants them). And there ABSOLUTELY needs to be an easy, clear-cut way to close them!
So many people don’t like hovercards? I love them LoL!
I don’t think they are in my way at all. Sometimes i find out that I didn’t follow someone =D
I love the hovercards… they’re not annoying in my opinion. ♥
It’s typical whenever Twitter changes things that people complain; hovercards are well-liked by many