And then I discovered Zoom Image. Zoom Image is a userscript that should be compatible with all browsers that support userscripts. Firefox users need the Greasemonkey add-on or a comparable add-on like Scriptish to run the userscript.

Once installed it adds a small overlay to the upper left corner of every image. This overlay is only visible if you move the mouse cursor over the image.

The three buttons, from left to right, have the functionality to zoom in, zoom out and reset the image. A click on one of the buttons performs the underlying action. Only the underlying image is affected by the actions, every other page elements stays exactly the same.

While that functionality is handy in itself, it still requires you to click on the toolbar buttons to change the image’s zoom level. The developer therefor has added a second option that does not require clicks at all.

For that you need to move the mouse over the toolbar that the userscripts adds to the image. The mouse wheel can then be used to zoom in and out of the image, completely without clicks. This is probably the more comfortable option, even though it means that you still need to move the mouse cursor on the toolbar before the functionality becomes available.

The script comes with configuration options that unfortunately need to be edited directly in the JavaScript source. Among the options are settings to change the default zoom factor, change the toolbar’s opacity or add custom buttons to the toolbar.

Basic instructions are available at the developer website over at Vadikom. The userscript can be downloaded or installed directly over at Github.

Image Zoom has been designed with simplicity in mind. A right-click on any image on a website will open a context menu after installation of the extension with options to zoom in and out of the selected image.

Right-clicking and using the context menu is however not the only option to zoom images. Another possibility is to right-click and use the mouse wheel to zoom an image. That’s usually more comfortable than the context menu solution. Other options that are provided include page zooming, fitting an image to the screen size of the web browser or email client and custom zoom and dimension options.

Some add-ons can interfere with some of the options provided by the Image Zoom extension. Especially add-ons that make use of the mouse buttons, like the recently reviewed Multi Links add-on, can block some of the functions. Image Zoom offers some options to configure the mouse buttons that trigger the zooming. It can be downloaded from the Thunderbird or Firefox website.

If you’re using Firefox, there’s a nifty little plugin that can help you out. It’s called Image Zoom and it does just that; zooms in on images. This tool may be small but it’s power packed in my opinion.

To begin with, you can change the size of any image from 10% to 400% of it’s original size. So, you can not only make an image bigger but also you can minimize a big image to fit in a particular size. Besides this, you have a custom zoom option, if you’re partial to a particular size. Another neat feature is the ability to enlarge an image to fit in a page, which is great for checking out details.

Access to Image Zoom is easy since the extension is one of the options when you right click an image. I won’t say Image Zoom is perfect. Enlarging an image doesn’t necessarily mean the image will be clearer, especially if the image was grainy to begin with. Still, this is one extension that’s worth having around as it’s really handy.

Have you heard of Image Zoom before? Do you know of any other ways to enlarge images in your browser itself.