Why so much effort on a feature that doesn’t and probably can’t work on mobile?
Were they happy enough with Safari’s 3D Touch preview which does more or less exactly this? (Only with a full screen preview so they don’t have to get into the messy business of summarizing pages.)
I don't get it. Because only a sizable percentage of visits come from desktop browsers instead of most/all of them, then it doesn't make sense to improve things for them?
You've misrepresented the reasoning. The best practice is: if you're going to tackle a major web UI problem, you should choose an approach that works for mobile (including iPads), which is already about half the traffic to wikipedia and growing. Especially if you are going to invest years of effort.
Calling that reasoning "bizarre" is just being deliberately obtuse.
To wit, some browser vendors have already started recognizing this problem and solving it in a more general, mobile-compatible way.[1][2]
That is not a best practice when there are fundamental differences between mouse vs touch.
In fact, trying to smooth over both desktop and mobile experiences with the exact same UI brush is the main reason we're left with the worst of both worlds.
By the way, Facebook also has hover previews on desktop. :)
Also, force touch OSX UI isn't a replacement when you need to manually highlight multi-word selections for it to work. Wikipedia's and Facebook's previews don't require you to do this.
I don't recommend sitting around and hoping browser vendors solve your problems. They're stuck in one-size-fits-all world while you can develop custom solutions for your site and users.
> trying to smooth over both desktop and mobile experiences with the exact same UI brush is the main reason we're left with the worst of both worlds.
Exactly the opposite is true. Browser vendors are able to customize the solution to the device and leverage new gestures. Case in point: Safari on desktop (3 finger tap) vs. mobile (3D touch). Even within page content, responsive design techniques can customize it to different devices.
> Also, force touch OSX UI isn't a replacement when you need to manually highlight multi-word selections for it to work.
There is no such thing as force touch on OSX (macOS). And we are talking about hyperlink previews, not selections. It sounds like you're a little confused here.
If you don't see any reason for a feature that benefits better than 50% of your users (according to the chart you posted), I'm really not sure what to tell you.
Were they happy enough with Safari’s 3D Touch preview which does more or less exactly this? (Only with a full screen preview so they don’t have to get into the messy business of summarizing pages.)