Google Instant Preview
Google’s been speeding things up lately, as you’ll know if you’ve turned on Google Instant for your searches. (See Google’s Instant Search: An Alphabet Book.)
Now Google’s rolling out Instant Preview, which, as the name suggests, lets you get a preview of the site itself. I’m not one of the lucky rolloutees yet, but Google, ever solicitous, has a Google Labs site that will let you play with the new feature. You’ll know when it arrives in your neighbourhood, because a small magnifying glass icon will a appear beside each of your results.
A click on it brings up a small popup window containing the relevant site. Once you’ve called up any preview, you can simply put your cursor on any of the other search results to cause its preview to appear. Neat.
You can read more about it on the Google Official Blog.
I’m glad the preview doesn’t pop up automatically just by hovering your mouse over the link. I’ve experienced that with some websites and it is rather annoying; while you’re trying to read one link or headline you move your mouse so you can read it, then a preview pops up and blocks what you were originally reading. Google’s instant preview can be turned on by clicking once on the magnifying glass and once more to turn it off so you decide whether or not you want the preview there. Also it’s on the far right side of the screen so it doesn’t get in your way of reading the other links. Thanks Google for all your innovation.
Jared