Whenever I write an article on this blog, I prefer to attach screenshots because it gives a better idea of what I am talking about. A very common problem that I face when taking screenshot is I had to capture a few times before I get it right. Reason is I can only attach image with a maximum of 513px width or else it the sidebar will be distorted. I try to avoid scaling whenever possible because it makes everything in the picture smaller. Imagine a 1024×768 screenshot turns into 513×385. You can hardly see the text in the screenshot!

So here’s a tool that has been helping me to resize the window so I can capture it at exact predefined size.

Sizer is a freeware utility that allows you to resize any window to an exact, predefined size. This is extremely useful when designing web pages, as it allows you to see how the page will look when viewed at a smaller size. The utility is also handy when compiling screen-shots for documentation, using Sizer allows you to easily maintain the same window size across screen grabs. When you run Sizer the ‘sizing arrows’ icon appears in the system tray. The screen grab below shows the Sizer icon in the right most side of the system tray.
Resize window

There are a few ways to resize a window. While Sizer is running in system tray, move your mouse cursor to any edge or corner of the window and right click. A pop up menu will appear with a list of predefined sizes. Simply select an item from this menu to resize the window to that size. To add new sizes to this menu or redefine existing ones use the Sizer Configuration Dialog.

Resize a window

I love the interactive sizing the most. It immediately shows me the current size of a window in a tooltip as I resize it. In addition if you press and hold the Control key while resizing a window, Sizer will snap the window size to the nearest grid size. By default this grid size is 10 pixels, but this can be set to a different value in the Configuration Dialog.

The official website says that Sizer is not supported under Windows Vista. There are issues installing the program and using interactive sizing. I tried installing Sizer in Vista and got the error message “Failed to copy file C:\Program Files\Sizer\Sizer.exe. Access is denied. Sizer installation was unsuccessful.“. Then I tried downloading the package that don’t require installation. I extracted it in Vista and ran Sizer. There wasn’t any problems running it but the interactive sizing is indeed buggy. Sometimes it works and sometimes don’t. At least the system menu integration and system tray resizing still works.

If you’re looking for a tool that is able to resize an unresizable window or dialog box, check out this article instead.

[ Download Sizer ]

[tags]resize, sizer, window, utility, scale[/tags]