How do I control the behavior of content previews?

Ponga "previews" the contents of the first comment in a selection when you, contributors, and other viewers explore the selections in your picture. Moving a mouse over a selection will cause the content to "preview" or "unfurl" much the way content appears in Facebook when you post external links.

What content in a selection will previews depends on the media type, and how it's entered into selections. Generally, media takes precedence over plain text so that your viewers get the most engaging possible experience from exploring your picture.

Embedded content like recordings, identified faces, or video will preview first. If none of these are available, then text of the first comment made in a selection will preview. If, as the owner of a picture, you'd like to change what appears in that first selection, you can delete the first comment and the contents of the second one will preview.  

Advanced Tips

How do I know what the preview will be before hitting post?

Controlling what something looks like can be important. When you paste a link into a Ponga comment window, you'll see the content of the link preview before you hit post. Depending on the speed of your network, you might want to wait a moment much as you would wait for a web page to load. Unless the content can be embedded, Ponga will display pretty much the same preview information as would appear in a Facebook post. (It draws on the same HTML standards for site metadata like image, title and description.)

What if I want to include the content without the link?

There are times when you want to preview the content of an external link without distracting your viewers with the link itself. The simple way to do this is to make your link the first and only bit of content in a selection in a picture.

Any link added into a comment window without additional content (such as a written comment to provide context or background) will appear by itself without the link visible. Clicking on the media provides a link to the original site. This is how the portraits to named people embed in a picture.

Which comment previews with a mouse hover.

If you want to change which comment in a selection appears first and thus previews when you mouse-over the selection, you will need to copy/paste and delete to move comments around.

Control with the link

What if you want to include a link, but not have the contents of that link preview in the comment at all. Power users of social media will know that you can control the previewing of content by selectively entering the protocol identifier (e.g. http:// or https://). Links included without the “http…,” will automatically link, but not preview their contents in a comment.

For more, see our Getting Started article, How to Add Stories to Pictures