{{Wiktionary Thumbshots are

screenshots screenshot (also known as screen capture or screen grab) is a digital image that shows the contents of a computer display. A screenshot is created by the operating system or software running on the device powering the display. Additionally, s ...

of online

documents A document is a writing, written, drawing, drawn, presented, or memorialized representation of thought, often the manifestation of nonfiction, non-fictional, as well as fictional, content. The word originates from the Latin ''Documentum'', w ...

such as web page in small

thumbnail Thumbnails are reduced-size versions of pictures or videos, used to help in recognizing and organizing them, serving the same role for images as a normal text index does for words. In the age of digital images, visual search engines and image ...

sizes. Thumbshots help users to visualize web sites or preview links before clicking. The dimension of a thumbshot

image An image is a visual representation of something. It can be two-dimensional, three-dimensional, or somehow otherwise feed into the visual system to convey information. An image can be an artifact, such as a photograph or other two-dimensiona ...

(usually under 120 pixels in width by 90 pixels in height) is generally much smaller than the actual online document allowing users to download and view a sample of the document quickly. Thumbshots can be automatically generated by custom

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...

or manually screen captured using popular graphics programs.Muriel Foulonneau, Thomas G. Habing, Timothy W. Col
Automated Capture of Thumbnails and Thumbshots for Use by Metadata Aggregation Services
''D-Lib Magazine'' January 2006 Some thumbshot pictures are enhanced with informative icons or text highlights. Normally, thumbshots are found embedded inline beside

hyperlinks In computing, a hyperlink, or simply a link, is a digital reference to data that the user can follow or be guided by clicking or tapping. A hyperlink points to a whole document or to a specific element within a document. Hypertext is text wi ...

in a web page to help improve

web browser A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used on ...

navigation by helping users to locate information faster. Thumbshots are often used to provide visual hints in

search engines A search engine is a software system designed to carry out web searches. They search the World Wide Web in a systematic way for particular information specified in a textual web search query. The search results are generally presented in a ...

and

web directories A web directory or link directory is an online list or catalog of websites. That is, it is a directory on the World Wide Web of (all or part of) the World Wide Web. Historically, directories typically listed entries on people or businesses, and th ...

where a large number of text links are displayed on a page. One of the early applications of thumbshots was developed by

Jakob Nielsen Jacob or Jakob Nielsen may refer to: * Jacob Nielsen, Count of Halland (died c. 1309), great grandson of Valdemar II of Denmark * , Norway (1768-1822) * Jakob Nielsen (mathematician) (1890–1959), Danish mathematician known for work on automorphi ...

while working for

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, the ...

. The application consisted of capturing and then displaying a small image of a webpage that a user had saved as a bookmark in their

. At that time, they were referred to as visual bookmarks. Since then, thumbshots have been used in numerous different applications, ranging from

Windows Explorer File Explorer, previously known as Windows Explorer, is a file manager application that is included with releases of the Microsoft Windows operating system from Windows 95 onwards. It provides a graphical user interface for accessing the file ...

and a desktop search engine like

Copernic Copernic Inc. is a company based in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, producer of Copernic Desktop Search and Copernic Server Search, desktop search software for home and business, running on Microsoft Windows. There is a free edition and paid editions ...

to Internet

search engine A search engine is a software system designed to carry out web searches. They search the World Wide Web in a systematic way for particular information specified in a textual web search query. The search results are generally presented in a ...

s and

which provide a thumbshot preview of a webpage alongside search results.

References

Multimedia

See also

References