Previews and PicLens (must see)

[TSPhoenix]

Today I came across two browser extensions availible for various browers and OSes (http://www.cooliris.com/site/support/download-all-products.php) and they really are something special.

The first one is called Previews and it allows you to preview pages (who'd have guessed) without navigating to another page. This might sound simple and unimportant but already it's been a timesaver. That said it could do with a little bit of work as I'd like different preview behaviour on Google (see screenshot) than I would for other pages.

http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/6764/anthumbsd2.png
1024x555, 637KB (http://img404.imageshack.us/my.php?image=prevanfr8.png)
1920x1200, 1.18MB (http://img119.imageshack.us/img119/4014/prevanmf8.png)


The second extension is PicLens, again its still early days so its by no means a one-stop solution yet (you can't save images), but if you are just browsing them it is far better than any pagination scripts I've seen. Basically it only works on select sites, but it shows a fullscreen (not always desirable) preview of all the images. The two screenshots below show it previwing a folder on my computer (not optimised yet) and a Google Image search for "mario galaxy".

http://img129.imageshack.us/img129/5341/cvthumbme8.png
Preview: 640x400, 884KB (http://img146.imageshack.us/my.php?image=piclenslocalcvlx5.png)
1920x1200, 2.72MB (http://images.cdmazika.com/images/bttk4y05p1aohm38cowm.png)


http://images.cdmazika.com/images/huyxpbzn0sel3ajroxc_thumb.png
Preview: 1024x640, 434KB (http://img340.imageshack.us/my.php?image=piclensgigalaxywo2.png)
1920x1200, 1.68MB (http://images.cdmazika.com/viewer.php?file=huyxpbzn0sel3ajroxc.png)


In short both of these extensions are pretty awesome so far. Until PicLens supports saving images and jumping back to the source page it isn't a replacment interfact for Google Images by any means, but it has a lot of potential. Previews is already proving to be very useful. For a start using these forums is a breeze. From the main page I can look into sub-forums and see which topics have new posts and open those topics in tabs with relative ease.

[Blitz]

I just downloaded Previews. It is quite nifty. On an unrelated note, these forums are absolutely dead in the middle of the day...

[Dominion]

Nice find, TSPhoenix.

These two extensions look quite promising. Shame they aren't compatible with Opera yet.

Question: Does Previews preview by hovering over links?

[Blitz]

Question: Does Previews preview by hovering over links?

You can change the settings to make it do this. Mine is set to the default where I hover over a link, and a little icon appears next to it allowing me to press it if I want to preview the page.

[Dominion]

Right, thanks blaze_burner.

[Boggle]

Piclens reminds me of custom script that ou can put into the address bar to make all the images on the page swirly.

[Game Boy]

i have seen a few friends at school using piclens, but never bothered to look it up,
so now i just got both ^_^
thanks

[Bourbanog]

I use Cooliris, a firefox extension occasionally. When you hover over a box to the side of a link, it'll bring up a small box previewing it. Quite nifteh.

[Blitz]

I use Cooliris, a firefox extension occasionally. When you hover over a box to the side of a link, it'll bring up a small box previewing it. Quite nifteh.

That's what it is - Cooliris Previews.

[Bourbanog]

Ah. I thought they were different from the screenshots and lack of Cooliris. Perhaps I did not think my cunning plan through enough.


http://smokedev.com/img/smokeimage/2008030343cunning_plan.jpg

[Game Boy]

after installing both of them, i found out neither of them works with the latest Safari :(

[Dominion]

http://smokedev.com/img/smokeimage/2008030343cunning_plan.jpg
I lol'd

Seriously bourbanog, where do you find all your hilarious pics. They're awesome!

On-topic: As I said in my previous post, both extensions show a lot of promise. Keep it up Cooliris and we may have some killer-extensions (See what I did there?) in the near future!

[Bourbanog]

I find them in the file in my desktop called 'lol imaj'.

I'm not sure how they got there though.

[<DkW>]

Looks cool, may check it out later.