Interclue and the pitfalls of going proprietary
The Interclue extension is supposed to give you a preview of links in Firefox before you visit them, saving you mouse-clicks and, with a little luck, allowing you to move quickly between multiple links on the same page. Unfortunately, the determination to monetize the add-on and keep its source code closed results in elaborations that make the basic idea less effective, and its constant pleas for donations make Interclue into nagware. As much as the usefulness of the basic utility, Interclue serves as an object lesson of the difficulties that the decision to go proprietary can take.
Using Interclue is straightforward. When the cursor pauses on a link, Interclue adds one or more 10x10-pixel icons to the right of the link. One of these icons can either be the favicon of the page referenced in the link, or a generic Interclue one. Other icons can be one of a couple of dozen that give information about the link, such as whether it is to an anchor on a page or encrypted, or the type of file that it points to. Or such, at least is the theory -- in practice, all that you might be able to detect without some desperate squinting is that an icon is available. And, if you do see more without much effort, you still have to remember what the extra icons mean. In practice, all you are really like to care about is that a preview is available, so this effort to add value falls a little flat.
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