# Disable thread preview popups? **URL:** \ **Category:** About This Message Board\ **Created:** [June 17, 2014, 1:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disable-thread-preview-popups/690981 "2014-06-17T13:09:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2014, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disable-thread-preview-popups/690981/21 "2014-06-18T20:23:34Z")
> [@TroutMan](#): > > Randall Munroe is spinning in his grave. Then he should have kept his cold, dead hands off of my mouse. (Trackball, actually.) ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2014, 8:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disable-thread-preview-popups/690981/22 "2014-06-19T08:11:12Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > This works perfectly, and yes, I do find it annoying and am willing to dispense with it on all sites. I grow weary of having to endlessly move and find a safe parking spot for my mouse pointer just so I can read the page without floaty shit in the way. When I want to park my mouse pointer in a non-intrusive out-of-the-way place (which I sometimes do, for various reasons), I always find that parking it in the current window’s title bar, or an empty spot on the menu bar, seems to work just fine. If the window does not fill the whole screen, I can also park the pointer any reasonably “dead” spot outside the window. It this harder to do with a trackball? ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2014, 1:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disable-thread-preview-popups/690981/23 "2014-06-19T13:24:27Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > When I want to park my mouse pointer in a non-intrusive out-of-the-way place (which I sometimes do, for various reasons), I always find that parking it in the current window’s title bar, or an empty spot on the menu bar, seems to work just fine. If the window does not fill the whole screen, I can also park the pointer any reasonably “dead” spot outside the window. > > It this harder to do with a trackball? Not really; even easier, perhaps. It is harder to do with a multiple-monitor setup, in that I can’t just flick the pointer left or right without having it go a long ways, which takes time to recover. The problem is that I tend to move the pointer along with my visual scanning - rather than scan first, point and click second - and this creates a trail of persistent pop-ups right in the things I’m looking at. It’s also tedious to click and the move the pointer, possibly thousands of times a day. (I have something of the same issue in apps like Word, where I might click to edit, then have the typing point obscured by the little clipboard and formatting popups.) I just don’t have any use for tips, popups and other things that appear the second I move the pointer over them. I find them completely distracting and useless, like those sprite flies and such that fly around some web pages. I do use tooltips (in Adobe apps) on rare occasions, but set them to appear slowly so that it’s a deliberate act to call them up instead of a continual flutter of confetti. Turning them off in the browser has been like having a persistent itch go away. ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2014, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disable-thread-preview-popups/690981/24 "2014-06-19T14:12:21Z")
File\>Options\>General\>Uncheck “Show Minitoolbar on text selection” ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2014, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disable-thread-preview-popups/690981/25 "2014-06-19T16:41:07Z")
In the olden days, we used to keep the cursor over on the thumb of the scrollbar. Now you have those creepy touch-mice, where you just pet them to scroll. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2014, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disable-thread-preview-popups/690981/26 "2014-06-19T18:34:53Z")
You actually got me curious for what I do to avoid this. So I went and played around for a while. I just leave the mouse anywhere. Rarely does scrolling make it wind up directly on top a link, and, when it does, I don’t get a tooltip unless I move the mouse around. I don’t know what I do on other sites, but I know I handle it well on Wikipedia, since I have advanced tooltips on on purpose. I guess I just naturally see where the page will have whitespace and leave it there. Weird that something that bugs one person so much is something I avoid without thinking abou it. ---
**Author:** ![74westy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/74westy/32/3950_2.png) [@74westy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/74westy)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2014, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disable-thread-preview-popups/690981/27 "2014-06-19T19:06:40Z")
> [@Inner\_Stickler](#): > > File\>Options\>General\>Uncheck “Show Minitoolbar on text selection” What browser are you using? ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2014, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disable-thread-preview-popups/690981/28 "2014-06-19T19:12:01Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > You actually got me curious for what I do to avoid this. So I went and played around for a while. I just leave the mouse anywhere. Rarely does scrolling make it wind up directly on top a link, and, when it does, I don’t get a tooltip unless I move the mouse around. > > I don’t know what I do on other sites, but I know I handle it well on Wikipedia, since I have advanced tooltips on on purpose. I guess I just naturally see where the page will have whitespace and leave it there. > > Weird that something that bugs one person so much is something I avoid without thinking abou it. It may be a problem only because (1) I use a triple-monitor setup that makes some simple things like flicking the pointer aside more problematic; (2) my browser is in a large vertical monitor so I see and “scan over” more of a page at a time than most users; (3) I use a trackball with a wheel for vertical scrolling, so my pointer tends to drag over more content than some users’ might; and (4) I have an ingrained loathing of fancy-dancy page clutter, especially when it collides with my preferred mousing methods. So maybe it’s just me. Glad to have found a fix. ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2014, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disable-thread-preview-popups/690981/29 "2014-06-19T19:46:19Z")
> [@74westy](#): > > What browser are you using? MS Word. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disable-thread-preview-popups/690981.md?page=1)