14 DAY TRIAL // Google's Instant Previews for search provide a useful functionality, in many cases, the ability to get a glimpse of a page before committing to clicking on the result can make the difference between a smart choice and time wasted on a page that's not useful to you.
Instant Previews have been available for about a year now, but they required users to click on a magnifying glass icon to display them.
This meant that users had to know what the magnifying glass icon did, what Instant Previews were and when they'd be useful.
Now, Google is removing some of the friction and is displaying Instant Previews without any clicks, just hover over a search result and then over the preview arrow that pops up.
"Instant Previews have been around since last year, allowing you to click on the magnifying glass to the right of the result to see a visual overview of a page," Jeromy Henry, user experience designer at Google, explains.
"Now these previews are no longer even a click away: if you move your mouse over a search result, arrows will appear. Hover over them to see a visual preview of that result," he announced.
The feature is now live for everyone and it's certainly easier to view Instant Previews now. Google gets to remove an icon from the search results page, always a goal for the purist designers at the company.
That said, the new button that's replacing it is not exactly beautiful either. It's also fairly large. The goal must be to get more people to notice it, but it can be a bit distracting.
Also, hovering over things to enable them is not the most consistent and functional way of doing things. The previews disappear if you move your mouse away from them which can be distracting as well.