It does not add anything in terms of web security or privacy as a connection to the site the link points to is still established but it provides a quicker and comfortable way of taking a look at a link’s contents without opening it in the same tab, new tab or new window first.

Interclue is only one option that users have when they want to access websites without clicks. A similar add-on for Firefox is the Cool Previews add-on from the Cooliris developers

A similar extension for Google Chrome is the ezLinkPreview Modal extension even though it requires to click the preview button that is shown when hovering over links to show the preview in a full screen overlay on the same page.

There are also semi-automated solutions especially when privacy is a concern. Instead of using one of the extensions you could use a web proxy instead. This would obviously mean to open the web proxy in a new tab or window and load the website using that web proxy. The web proxy on the other hand will allow anonymous access to the site’s contents.

Have other solutions for previewing links and websites without opening them directly? Let us hear them in the comments.

Interclue adds little icons next to links that display information about the destination of that link in a new window. If the link is pointing to another regular website the title and main body text will be displayed next to additional information such as statistics about the website.

One of the elements that raises Interclue above other preview extensions is the ability to customize the appearance and functionality that is accessible in the preview windows. It is for instance possible to add thumbnails, a digg this button, delicious tagclouds, define the amount of words for the preview and much more.

This is a highly flexible extension which could replace any other preview link extension that you might be using.