ezLinkPreview Modal

For a non-modal, resizable, draggable overlay, see my other extension at: https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/nnkcfbiefgdaceeplickkkmifpicbpcc

This extension finds all links on a page, ignoring ones that start with #, ftp, javascript, and mailto. Hovering over one of these links, fades in a small icon at the upper right corner of the link. Links starting with "http" show the orange icon, whereas relative URLs show the blue icon. If you click on this small icon instead of the link itself, the linked URL is opened in a preview overlay within the current tab. You can then interact with the new page and even launch another overlay from within the current one. To close the preview, click on the X at the upper right or on the grey background outside the overlay. This leaves you back in the original page. Use this extension to preview pages without navigation or the creation of multiple tabs. (NOTE: some sites do not allow themselves to be run in frames/overlays and this will cause an actual navigation to the linked page).

If the link points to a pdf, ppt, pps, or tif file, clicking on the 'EZ' button will send the file to the Google Docs Viewer allowing you to view the file without downloading it to Adobe Reader/Foxit/etc. This means you don't need to run a separate extension for redirecting your PDFs to the Google Viewer, although you certainly can run these alongside ezLinkPreview Modal.