Preview is a

computing Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes, and development of both hardware and software. Computing has scientific, ...

function to display a document, page, or film before it is produced in its final form. In the case of printed material this is known as "print preview".

Contents preview

Using Preview feature, users can preview and see the current stage of the process before producing into a final form. Preview lets users to visualize current/final product and correct possible errors easily before finalizing the product. Preview is necessary for markup language editing software like Web development applications. Web development application like

Adobe Dreamweaver Adobe Dreamweaver is a proprietary web development tool from Adobe Inc. It was created by Macromedia in 1997 and developed by them until Macromedia was acquired by Adobe Systems in 2005. Adobe Dreamweaver is available for the macOS and Windo ...

and most

HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaS ...

editors have 'Preview in Browser' feature. During webpage development, you must preview the page in a browser to see the definitive end result. Though browsers in general produce the same results, each browser version can display

pages somewhat differently. Preview in Browser shows what the codes will appear in specified Web Browser. For seeing the difference and seeing what your site visitors will see after you publish your pages, the Preview function exists. Video editing applications also have preview feature to see the current product made during the editing process. Apple Inc.’s video editing software,

Final Cut Pro Final Cut Pro is a series of non-linear video editing software programs first developed by Macromedia Inc. and later Apple Inc. The most recent version, Final Cut Pro 10.6.4, runs on Mac computers powered by macOS Big Sur 11.5.1 or later. The ...

’s interface has two preview windows, 'Viewer window' and 'Canvas window'. 'Viewer window' lets users to preview clips and decide which one to use. User can also make changes to clips in this window. 'Canvas window' is a program window that shows finished program and letting user to preview the creation so far. Many interactive websites and online forums allow users to preview their contents before submitting it. This is particularly useful on sites with complex markup (not

WYSIWYG In computing, WYSIWYG ( ), an acronym for What You See Is What You Get, is a system in which editing software allows content to be edited in a form that resembles its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product, such as a printed d ...

), where it serves as an opportunity to identify and correct errors and formatting problems before saving the content.

Print preview

Print Preview is a functionality that lets users see the pages that are about to print, allowing the users to see exactly how the pages will look when they are printed. By previewing what the layout will look like when printed without actually printing, users can check and fix possible errors before they pursue on the actual printing. Most applications have a Print Preview feature and some applications, like

Adobe Photoshop Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe Inc. for Windows and macOS. It was originally created in 1988 by Thomas and John Knoll. Since then, the software has become the industry standard not only in rast ...

Microsoft Office Microsoft Office, or simply Office, is the former name of a family of client software, server software, and services developed by Microsoft. It was first announced by Bill Gates on August 1, 1988, at COMDEX in Las Vegas. Initially a marketin ...

, automatically open ‘Print Preview’ feature when ‘Print’ menu is selected. This feature is useful for making sure that the layout is the way user expects to be before the actual printing.

Microsoft Word Microsoft Word is a word processor, word processing software developed by Microsoft. It was first released on October 25, 1983, under the name ''Multi-Tool Word'' for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other pla ...

’s Print Preview feature lets users to zoom in/out the document or show multiple pages in a window. Graphic tools like

’s Print Preview lets users to position and scale the image before printing. Web browsers also have Print Preview feature so that users can preview how the website contents will be printed out on paper:

Internet Explorer Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE) is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft which was used in the Windows line of operating systems (in ...

has Print Preview feature to prevent accidents like printing ten pages where it ought to print one or printing a page with a background so dark you couldn’t read the text and wasting printer ink. In

Print Preview, you can adjust the paper size you'll print on, margins, and page orientation of the Web page.

Mozilla Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements current an ...

has Print Preview built in as well.

Mac OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lap ...

Safari (Web browser) Safari is a web browser developed by Apple. It is built into macOS, iOS, and iPadOS, and uses Apple's open-source browser engine, WebKit, which was derived from KHTML. Safari was introduced in Mac OS X Panther in January 2003. It was i ...

lets users to preview the web page when Print is clicked. In Print, Preview button shows and by clicking Preview, it opens

Preview (software) Preview is the vendor-supplied image viewer and PDF viewer of the macOS operating system. In addition to viewing and printing digital images and Portable Document Format (PDF) files, it can also edit these media types. It employs the Aqua ...

application and the print preview of the web page shows up.

References

{{Reflist User interfaces