Browsing image search engines has been the major source of inspiration to me. It is amazing how much creative work is stored and searched online.

This post will hopefully make your web image searching and browsing even more fun: the three addons listed will let you easily zoom the image thumbnails in to quicker choose one from search results.

Let's see how we can quickly preview thumbnails in search results, download any image in its original size and preview your contacts' Facebook photos right from your dashboard:

Thumbnail Zoom [No Longer Available]

Thumbnail Zoom [No Longer Available] is a fun addon that lets preview thumbnail pictures on Facebook, Twitter, Google Picasa, DeviantART, PhotoBucket, Flickr, LinkedIn, Wikipedia, YouTube, Google Images and a few other popular services Any supported site can be enabled or disabled using the toolbar menu and the addon settings dialog.

preview image thumbnail

The addon also adds an extra context right-click menu item that allows to download the enlarged image without ever opening it.

The options panel lets you disable any of the supported services as well as set the delay before displaying the image and its opacity:

firefox preview images

Cool Previews [No Longer Available]

CoolPreviews is the multi-feature FireFox addon that lets you preview any linked content including images. The image preview panel enables you to:

  • Zoom the image in or out;
  • Open the linked image in the separate tab;
  • Email the current link;
  • Play all the images on the page in the slideshow (works especially well for popular image search services like Flickr, Google Images, etc)
firefox preview images

You can also turn previews on/off on specific sites anytime by clicking the icon on the status bar (or for those who have no status bar in FireFox 4, the same settings can be accessed in Tools -> Addons). CoolPreviews will memorize your settings.

The "Settings" dialog lets you customize your image previewing experience in many ways:

  • Set when you want the preview panel to appear: on mouse-over, on clicking the CoolPreviews icon, on mouse-over + CTRL key;
  • Set the location of the preview panel (relative to the cursor or the link);
  • Control the speed (how fast you want the preview panel to appear)
  • Set the theme (dark or ice);
firefox preview images

Additional fun features:

  • Temporarily bookmark images to the right column with "stacks" feature;
  • Scroll Google Image search results on an "infinite 3D Wall" (Cooliris addon required).
  • Preview multiple thumbnails simultaneously without (mouse over subsequent images on a page while the preview window is open or pinned).

Obviously, there's no point in using the above two addons simultaneously, so you should pick one.

Facebook PhotoZoom

Facebook PhotoZoom only works for Facebook, but I am sure most of the readers frequent the site, so they'll find the addon very useful. The tool works as a magnifier for Facebook thumbnails (both profile pictures and album photos): when you hover over a thumbnail, a tooltip will appear with the bigger image in it.

preview image thumbnail

They have a few reported issues (some people experience problems making it work on Windows), but I've had no such issues.

Do you have any more tips for better thumbnail preview in FireFox? Are you aware of any similar tools for other browsers?