One solution for the issue are scripts or extensions that automatically display the bigger picture when the mouse hoovers over the image. I have reviewed several extensions and scripts in the past that provide users with that functionality. From Hoover Zoom for the Chrome browser to the Image Search Preview and Zoom Image userscripts.

Mouseover Popup Image Viewer is a new userscript that is compatible with the Firefox and Google Chrome browser (the Chrome functionality is limited though according to the developer as http referrers cannot be faked).

You can simply hoover over an image to see a larger version of that image directly in the browser window.

This works for all images that are directly linked and dozens of image hosting websites including Imagebam, Imagefap, Flickr, Imageearn or Pixhost. Firefox users get the additional benefit that the script can bypass the hotlinking protection of some of the image hosting sites. Instead of having to visit the site to view the image, Firefox users see those images directly in the same browser tab.

The image popup can only be as large as the browser window. This can be a issue if the original image is larger than the browser window. In this case, only part of the image is shown on the screen in the preview.

Firefox and Chrome users can download and install Mouveover Popup Image Viewer from the official Userscripts.org website. (Thanks Vineeth for the tip)

The notify-send command allows you to display messages right on the desktop via the notification daemon. These messages are fairly unobtrusive, fit it with your desktop scheme, and are really easy to set up in your scripts. And in this article I am going to show you how you can add this little system for easy message pop ups.

Installation

The notify-send tool  is a part of the libnotify package. So to install this do the following:

1. Open up a terminal window.
2. Issue the command sudo apt-get install libnotify-bin.
3. Enter your sudo password.
4. Accept any necessary dependencies.

That’s it. You are ready to start using this handy command.

Usage

The basic usage for the command is:

notify-send OPTIONS MESSAGE

Figure 1

Let’s take a very simple example of popping up the message “Hello Ghacks” on the desktop. To do this you would issue the command notify-send “Hello Ghacks” and hit enter. When you do you will see a small message pop up at the bottom of your desktop as you see in Figure 1. Of course the appearance of this message will depend upon which desktop you are using. I am using GNOME Shell so mine will be a variation on those of you using standard GNOME.

Let’s add an image to the message (the image you see in Figure 1 is the default). To add an image you use the -i option. The image used must be a .png file. You can find plenty of these in the /usr/share/pixmaps directory. So I am going to use the GNOME logo to remind me to take a walk. The command would look like:

notify-send -i /usr/share/pixmaps/gnome-about-logo.png “Take a walk!”

Figure 2

And the message would look like the one you see in Figure 2.

When you use this command you will notice the messages don’t last very long. You can change that with the -t option. You can set this so the message stays up until the user tell it to go away (by clicking on it) or you can set it to remain in milliseconds. So let’s say you want to give yourself a message to take a walk and you want it to remain open for ten seconds. To do this the command would look like:

notify-send -t 10000 -i /usr/share/pixmaps/gnome-about-logo.png “Take a walk!”

Or, if you want that message to remain until you click it away, the command would look like:

notify-send -t 0 -i /usr/share/pixmaps/gnome-about-logo.png “Take a walk!”

Final thoughts

You can imagine how much easier it has now become to notify yourself when a script has finished. You no longer have to rely on email messages or hacked-up notifications. Linux has a nice, built-in notification system you can use in your scripting or your cron jobs to let you know the things you need to know.

Usage for most operations relies on the keyboard shortcut [CTRL ALT D] which has to be pressed when the window is active or when the mouse is hovering over the element that should be clicked on. This can be used for instance to automatically close popup windows or to check radioboxes on an Internet page.

Automatically adding text to a form on the other hand requires some additional work. Pressing the keyboard shortcut while hovering the mouse over the text field will add it to the program’s list of items. A double-click on the entry will provide options to enter the desired text for the form.

Please note that the program does not work with all program windows, buttons or forms. This is usually the case if the button or text field have not been created from the windows standard libraries. There is unfortunately no fix for that.

Clickoff uses roughly 5 Megabytes of computer memory. There is no information about system compatibility. It ran fine on a Windows XP Service Pack 3 test system. The website of the program is in German. Just scroll down to the bottom and click on the Download link to download the file. The program itself is available with a German and English interface.

It is possible to disable that small notification window when popups are blocked in Opera by going to Tools > Preferences > Advanced > Notifications and unchecking “Show notification for blocked pop-ups”. From then on the notification window will not be shown anymore.

I came only across a handful of sites that use popups to display site content. Most use them simply to display advertising which is really annoying.

via Opera Watch