DiggThumbs: See where you're going (sometimes)

by Amber Rhea Sep 8th 2006

DiggThumbs is a Firefox extension that adds a thumbnail-sized screenshot to every listing on digg, so that you can "[k]now what you are clicking on before you click it." The screenshots are dynamically generated by WebShotsPro.com.

Here's what digg looks like before installing DiggThumbs:

And here's what it looks like after:

It's a cool idea, but the reality is that DiggThumbs serves its intended purpose only some of the time. If the linked page features a photo, image, or logo, the thumbnail can be helpful.

But if the linked page is just a screen full of mostly text, the screenshot doesn't carry any helpful information.

What would make DiggThumbs immensely more useful would be an "enlarge on hover" feature, such as Link Thumbnail. Maybe we'll see that feature in version 1-point-next?

(I feel like I should find a way to tie this to the story about Digg changing its algorithm and subsequently ticking off some of its top users, but... sorry, folks, I got nothing.)

Tags: Digg, DiggThumbs, extensions, Firefox, Firefox extensions, FirefoxExtensions, WebShotsPro

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Jonathan Cohen said 2:09PM on 9-13-2006

Try Browster at http://www.browster.com. It gives most links a little icon you can hover the mouse over to see a full-sized popup of the destination.

Drawbacks: 1) Works only on IE. 2) Can be a bit distracting if you mouse over a Browster icon by mistake.

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