A new browser extension for Microsoft Edge lets you zoom in to images and videos links to see a full-size preview.
One of the most popular kind of browser extensions are those which allow you to see full-size images behind a link by just hovering over said link. It works great on websites like Reddit, 4chan. At one time, I even remember there being a popular hover zoom extension for Facebook which would allow you to see full-size profile pictures without adding other people; creepy but effective.
Anyway, so when Microsoft launched browser extensions for their new Edge browser, I thoroughly expected such an extension to be made available soon.
That is the case today.
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Introducing ZoomZoom: see full image preview on hover in Microsoft Edge
Developed by one samuthekid, ZoomZoom bills itself as a “hover zoom-like extension for Microsoft Edge. It was released publicly earlier today.
Here are its salient features:
- Preview images and videos on hovering over their links.
- Scroll web-pages while fixing previewed images in place. It allows you to view other parts of the page while keeping the image or video on top. This one’s for multi-taskers. You can activate it by pressing ‘F’ after previewing.
- Change the size of the hover preview by pressing ‘V’.
- For exceptionally tall images such as comics and infographics, you can zoom in and then scroll down. Press ‘Space’ to go down, and ‘B’ to go up. (I love the controls!)
- If the link you hovered over leads to an album of images, you can preview them one-by-one by pressing ‘M’ to go back and ‘N’ to go forward.
- Pause preview videos by tapping Space.
- Preview comments on reddit by hovering over ‘comments’ link under submissions.
- Instantly save previewed images by pressing ‘S’
ZoomZoom appears to be designed particularly for reddit, as seen in the video below, but the developer has stated that it works for every website.
As this is the first release of ZoomZoom, you can expect it to have a number of bugs. Please report them in the reddit thread here.
Video
How to install custom extensions in Microsoft Edge
- Download ZoomZoom from the GitHub repo.
- Use a software like 7-zip or just right-click > Extract the downloaded zipped folder.
- Launch Microsoft Edge
- Type ‘about:flags’ in the address bar and press enter
- Scroll around and find the ‘Enable extension developer features’ option.
- Enable said option
- Click on the dot-dot-dot ‘…’ menu in Edge. It’s in the top-right corner.
- Click on ‘Load extensions’
- Select the folder you just extracted in Step 2.
For a visual step-by-step tutorial, go here.
Voila. Restart Microsoft Edge to start using ZoomZoom for previewing full size images and videos behind links. Works great on reddit!