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Sizer v3.22

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.

Downloading and installing Sizer

The easiest way to download and install Sizer is to use the setup program sizerinst.exe (40 KB). Once this file has been downloaded, simply run it and follow the on screen instructions to install the files and create shortcuts as required.

Alternatively, for those who prefer not to use the installation program and are happy to setup shortcuts themselves, the files can be downloaded in a zip file sizer3.zip (13 KB).

Using Sizer

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. While this icon is shown, Sizer is active and the following actions can be performed.


Sizer System Tray Icon

Precise resizing

While sizer is running, move the cursor over the border of a window so that the one of the resizing cursors appear, the screen grab below shows the NW-SE sizing cursor:


NE-SW Sizing Cursor

Any edge or corner of the window will do as long as it brings up one of the resizing cursors. When the a resizing cursor is displayed, click the right hand mouse button and a pop-up menu will appear as shown below.


Sizer Popup Menu

This menu shows a list of 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.

As well as right clicking on the border of a window it is possible to right click on the restore button to bring up the resizing menu, see below. This feature can be useful if the window is currently maximized.


Sizer Popup Menu From Restore Button

System Tray Resizing

It seems that quite a few people liked the way the original version of Sizer operated, so from v3.21 this feature that been reintroduced. As an alternative to the precise sizing method described above, it is possible to resize a window directly from the system tray popup menu. Simply right click on the Sizer icon in the system tray, the popup menu will display a set of options to resize the active window to one of the defined sizes (see screenshot below). The first line on the menu is not selectable and is used only to let you know what window Sizer will resize when one of the menu items below it is selected. If the active window is not resizeable then Sizer won't show these options on the menu.


Sizing From System Tray Menu

Interactive resizing

Sizer also offers a feature that shows the current size of a window in a tooltip as you resize it. When windows are resized in the normal way a tooltip is displayed as shown below


Window Resizing Tooltip

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.

Tooltip support makes use of a set of features that may not be available on all systems. I believe this only affects a very small number of systems, namely Windows 95 without Internet Explorer installed or using a version lower than IE 4. If this is the case on your system, Sizer will warn you and will disable interactive sizing, precise resizing and system tray resizing will continue work as before.

Configuring Sizer

Sizer has a number of configuration options that control how precise and interactive sizing work. To access these options right click on the Sizer tray icon and select Configure sizer... from the popup menu, as shown below.


Configure Popup Menu

Sizer displays the following dialog to allow its behaviour to be customised.


Sizer Configuration Dialog

The Menu Configuration area is used to configure the list of sizes displayed in the popup menu when precise sizing is used. By default Sizer is configured to allow window resizing to 640×480, 800×600 and 1024×768. To add additional sizes click the Add button, then enter a Description, a Width and a Height into the relevant edit boxes. The order menu items are displayed can be customised by selecting an item from the list box and clicking the Move Up and Move Down buttons.

As well as resizing a window is it possible to reposition it as well. The Move To drop-down lists gives the option to reposition the window at the predefined points. If the User Defined option is selected, the Top and Left edit boxes are enabled allowing you to type while the top left corner of the window should be positioned. A value of Top = 0 and Left = 0 will reposition the window to the top-left of the screen. If you only want to reposition a window and not resize it set the Don't resize window check box.

The bottom part of the dialog is used to configure Interactive Sizing. The check box Show tooltip when resizing windows controls whether or not a tooltip containing the window size is displayed when a window is resized normally. The Window resizing snap size controls the grid size that windows are snapped to when the control key is held during resizing.

Version History

Sizer was born in February 1997 and came as a direct response to a usenet post by Kevin Kalp. The original post can be viewed here. The first version was knocked up over a lunch hour. Version 1 of Sizer had a limited circulation.

A few weeks later the program had a number of configuration features added and was then submitted to Tucows. Version 2 was the first publicly available version and can still be found on various web sites despite by best efforts to get links redirected.

In about mid 1999, I reworked Sizer to operate in the manner I'd originally intended (i.e. right clicking on the window border to bring up the popup menu). This code is substantially different from previous versions and uses a technique that injects a portion of code into all running processes. Nothing happened with version until July 2000, when I released it as version 3 on this web page.

Version 3.01 followed in October 2000 and is just a bug fix for Windows 2000. (Thanks to Rick Robinson for reporting the issue.)

Version 3.10 (May 2001) adds interactive sizing and tooltip support, this development was prompted by suggestions from Ken Schiff. This version includes a few minor number of bug fixes including a fix to a problem where the status bar of a window could become corrupted during precise sizing. This version made it onto the web site in late May 2001.

Version 3.20 (Feb 2002) adds the ability to reposition windows as well as resizing them. Thanks to Freddy Leitner (and others) for this suggestion.

Version 3.21 (Feb 2002) Fixes a bug in the generation of default menu options (thanks to Charles Lutz for reporting this). Also the old style resize operations on the system tray context menu have been reintroduced.

Version 3.22. (Apr 2002) Fixes a bug when resizing windows on multi-monitor systems, thanks to Pascal Lagarde for the initial report. It includes a workaround for a problem with tooltips not disappearing on console windows, credit to Markus Jakobi for reporting this issue. Also the uninstaller was updated to cope with differences on Windows XP, the uninstaller should not report bogus errors about removing shortcuts that weren't added in the first place.

General Info

Sizer is freeware, you are welcome distribute the program.

If you link to sizer from your web site, please drop me an email and I'll keep you informed of changes to the program etc.

Feedback is always welcome, if you think sizer is great, if you think it's pants or if you've any suggestion for future improvements give me a shout.