Image enlargement extension Imagus for Firefox
I reviewed Imagus back in 2013 when the then popular extension Hoverzoom caused controversy in regards to scripts it ran that were not in any way related to enlarging images on the Internet.
Imagus came to same fame and many call it the best Chrome extension of its kind. The author of the extension ported it over to Firefox recently and it has been available for the web browser for a couple of months.
The add-on works similar to its Chrome sibling. You move the mouse cursor over an image on a website and it will display a larger version of it if provided or zoom the original image instead if that is not the case.
Imagus ships with supports for a large number of popular sites such as eBay, Reddit, Imgur, Wikipedia, DeviantArt, many Google services, Facebook or Twitter to name a few. All in all, it offers more than 200 default rules that ensure that it works on popular websites and services right out of the bat without any form of configuration.
While designed with enlarging images in mind, it works with other types of media such as video or audio contents as well provided that there is a rule for it available.
As far as rules are concerned, you can look them all up in the options under sieve and create your own ones as well. The syntax uses regular expressions and it may make sense to study some of the existing rules the extension ships with to understand how to create your own.
There is also an option to define rules that block or allow specific sites or part of sites. This can be useful if you want the extension to work on a particular part of a site or block it from working on another. This uses regular expressions as well.
Besides that, there are also lots of options and preferences to play with. It is possible to add a hotkey to the functionality so that media only gets enlarged when you hit the key. This can be useful if you need the functionality at times but not all the time since it will enlarge images that you come across when you hover over them and a rule exists otherwise.
Other features include image preloading to speed things up, showing or hiding captions, defining where the image popup appears on the screen, or blocking hovered links from appearing in the browsing history.
Imagus supports a large list of shortcuts that come in handy as well. From default shortcuts such as Ctrl-s to save contents right away over +/- to zoom in or out to album and media specific shortcuts to jump to the next or previous image or pause playback.
Closing Words
Imagus is a useful browser extension that is now available for Chrome and Firefox. It is quite powerful thanks to its rules system and while it requires knowledge of regular expressions for customization purposes, it works quite well in its default state on many popular sites.