Preview Google search results with this extension

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Preview Google search results with this extension

July 25, 2004

A reader (who didn’t leave his name, though from the email address it should be a Marc or Marc-Andre) wrote me an email to tell me about this Firefox extension, GooglePreview that inserts previews of search results pages before each search result at Google. Quite neat.

Screenshot of GooglePreview extension in action

It also inserts product screenshots from Amazon if a search result points to Amazon and even a stock’s trends (see the GooglePreview website for screenshots).

Thanks for the heads up Marc!

Rory asked how it works, so I took a quick look at the source of the XPI and found out how.

Posted by Chu Yeow at July 25, 2004 SGT |

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| Category: Mozilla

17 Comments & TrackBacks (Add yours)

The paper doll icon that precedes each comment is an idea conceived by Vanessa Tan.

This extension is so cool!

Sometimes I remmeber the look of site where I found something interesting, but not the name. GP will help me in that situations…

And, it’s great for showing other what Firefox and extensions can do :)(

Posted by: Ilija on July 25, 2004 11pm

So, without having tried the extension, does it download every page in the results and render them (slow and ugly) or does it download the preview pictures from a central repository (difficult to keep up to date unless installations are sending back previews of pages it doesn’t have, which itself would be open to attack)?

Posted by: Rory Parle on July 26, 2004 12am

Rory: Good question. You got me curious too so I took a look at the source of the XPI.

There are 3 main preview images: Amazon, stocks, and others (normal webpages).

For Amazon search results, it gets the product images (there’s boilerplate URLs for where these images are). Same thing for Yahoo stocks.

For your run-of-the-mill websites, it uses this script:

http://open.thumbshots.org/image.pxf?url=

That gives you a thumbnail of the url you pass to it. So this link will give you a thumbnail screenshot of this blog.

Pretty clever work, I’d have to say.

Posted by: Cheah Chu Yeow on July 26, 2004 12am

Pretty neat. I’ve made a bookmarklet to get a preview of the current page: thumbnail

Posted by: Rory Parle on July 26, 2004 2am

Cool! The thumbshots thing (as in the script, not your bookmarklet) only seems to work for the root of a domain though.

Posted by: Cheah Chu Yeow on July 26, 2004 2am

extension of the week
Via Redemption in a Blog, this extension, Google Preview, is one you’ve got to try. It looks like it uses Thumbshots to slot in a screenshot of the site next to the Google search results. It’ll also pull the image from Amazon results if one exists and …

Posted by: adot's notblog* on July 26, 2004 3am

According to this page, only DMOZ listed sites have thumbshots. Check e.g. a Google search for Eric Meyer’s non root (!) page on CSS, which is DMOZ listed.

Posted by: Andreas on July 26, 2004 3am

According to this page, only DMOZ listed sites have thumbshots. Check e.g. a Google search for Eric Meyer’s non root (!) page on CSS, which is DMOZ listed.

Posted by: Andreas on July 26, 2004 3am

Google with previews
As an active user of Firefox (test nightlies and reads the forum) I sometimes stumble over great ideas related to the browsing experience. And I am astonished by the creativity and talent that lies within the open source community. This…

Posted by: Shetil on July 26, 2004 8am

Thumbshots
L’ Open Thumbshots Project è un sito che permette di creare dinamicamente dei thumbnail snapshot (una renderizzazione su bitmap per intenderci) del vostro sito, tutto quello che c’è da fare è copiare il relativo logo () nella pagina dove sarà present…

Posted by: Full(o)bloG on July 26, 2004 9pm

Google Preview
If you’ve been following the search engine wars, the latest craze the kids are into these days is providing thumbnails of the web sites that return in search results. Google, however, sticking to the ‘less is more’ approach, doesn’t have…

Posted by: Gadgetopia on July 26, 2004 11pm

GooglePreview - an extension to Firefox
Redemption in a blog tells about an extension to Firefox that allows you to get previews of your search results on Google. The extension is called GooglePreview and redemption in a blog has analyzed what it does….

Posted by: Strang's Blog on July 27, 2004 9am