YouTube Preview and ViewTubeare two great, free Chrome extensions that will enhance your YouTube browsing and viewing experience. They are both must haves for anyone who spends even a moderate amount of time viewing or exploring YouTube videos.
I admit it: I do a lot of watching online videos. I don’t get out of the house as much as I should, if the pallor of my skin is any indication, and much of my time indoors is spent with some kind of video playing on the laptop.
YouTube is, of course, a never ending source of new content (some of questionable worth but that’s another matter) so it’s quite common for me to have it as one of my open tabs or pages.
With that being the case, I am always on the lookout for ways to make my viewing easier, faster, or more entertaining and there are two Chrome extensions in particular I have found more useful than most. YouTube Preview is an extension that will give you a quick overview of a video’s contents and ViewTube will expand on that process and let you play videos while browsing to other sites as well.
“YouTube Preview – Is It Worth Watching That?” is a heck of a long name for a Chrome extension but the program itself is quite simple and useful. Installation is brief and simple, as with most Chrome extensions, requiring nothing more than approving an add request. Immediately you will be able to go to YouTube and use the extension. Simply browse the site as you normally would, but now, when you see a video title you think you may be interested in, you can hover your mouse pointer over the preview picture and get a collection of single shot frames from throughout the video’s length. This gives you a decent idea of the overall visual contents of the video without having to go to the video’s page and actually load the entire thing. This is actually a feature that is pretty common on many video sites these days but YouTube has not adopted it personally yet so it is nice to have it as an extension for those of us that are used to it in other places but still browse a lot of YouTube videos.
“ViewTube” is the perfect compliment to your video voyage as it will offer you the ability to watch videos on Facebook, Twitter and Google+ in a somewhat different way than you are used to. Essentially, when you select a video from one of these sites that you want to watch, it is opened off to the side of the page, allowing you to continue browsing on the left side while the video plays. This is a great tool for the modern web crawler because we are always multi-tasking and taking in multiple sources or streams of data and entertainment. The install is simple and just like YouTube Preview it works on an automatic basis when you’re browsing a page that can use it. ViewTube works on any YouTube video that is posted to any of those pages, and so does YouTube Preview, for that matter.
Between the two of them, these extensions can maximize your YouTube video viewing pleasure. Head on over to the Chrome web store with the link below to check them out or install them. Until next time, my friends.
