Youtube is my favorite destination when I don’t have anything to do. Most of the time I search for videos related to tech stuff or any music video. But the problem with Youtube is that it is flooded with too many videos and sometimes, I come across videos that are fake i.e. they are either about something else (mostly advertising websites) or a compilation of some images (common in Music Videos) that I just hate. So I searched for Greasemonkey scripts or plugins that can show previews before actually viewing them and I got some:
Youtube Thumbs for Google Chrome
Youtube Thumbs, a greasemonkey script shows an animated preview of 3 thumbnails instead of a static image when you mouseover on any video. Getting to know whats inside the video before opening it is a real advantage, you won’t have to wait for the youtube video page to load and then find it a fake video, so it saves both time and bandwidth.
Get it Here: Youtube Thumbs
YouTube Animated Thumbnails for Firefox
If you’re a Firefox user, then you can install YouTube Animated Thumbnails , a greasemonkey script that makes thumbnails cycle though the 3 previews. There are some additional feature to view all thumbnails on mouse hover too.
Get it Here: YouTube Animated Thumbnails
VideoSurf
If you don’t wanna install any greasemonkey script then there’s an addon for this job too – VideoSurf. It not only lets you peek at the contents of a video link before you click to watch the video but also gives you useful information about them too. Moreover, its not just for firefox, you can also get visual previews on twitter, google search results, Yahoo! search results, FriendFeed, OneRiot and much more!
Get it Here: VideoSurf
Ff you are wondering why these scripts and addons only show 3 thumbnails on mouseover, its because Youtube only stores 3 thumbnail previews of a video. You can notice this whenever you searchfor any video, you will see different thumbnails each time.
By the way, If you know any other Script/Add-on/Plugin then please do let us know by leaving a comment.
