Is there a program that does this?
 

is there any kind of software or program that will allow you to view a "screeshot" of an html file without opening it in a browser?

Don't XP do this if you put your views in thumbnails ???

it does with images.. but not with html files. or does it? anyone know if this is possible with xp?

XP does it set to thumbnail you see html thumb

XP does do it if you have it set to thumbnail view...

Or if you just click on it once, it shows a preview on the left side

If you want thumbnail Windows Explorer will indeed show one.
My Windows 98SE machine will do it if I click View menu then
check "As Web Page", then click the file.
If you want to get full screenshots (not just tiny thumbs) of a
lot of web pages, I wrote some software to do that.
You paste in a list of URLs and it generates screenshots
of each one. You mentioned not opening it in a browser,
my software actually does open it in IE (in full screen mode),
take a screen capture, then load the next URL, etc.