As a technical writer and software blogger, an important part of my job is taking screenshots. I need to do this every day, and they often need to be in very specific sizes. To make that happen, I find myself reaching for Sizer multiple times every day.
Sizer is incredibly lean. You can get it as an MSI installer, or as a simple ZIP package containing two files, weighing just 16KB in total. In this case, we recommend the ZIP package. It hooks into Windows so that when you right-click any window border, you get a small pop-up menu with preset window sizes. Click one of the entries in the menu, and Sizer instantly resizes the window.
You can also pop up Sizer’s menu by clicking each window’s icon (in the top-left corner). This will cause the default window menu to be shown, but with a new entry called Resize/reposition, offering access to Sizer’s presets.
When you’re not using it, Sizer quietly sits in the system tray, taking up just under 2MB of RAM. You can right-click its icon and open its single-pane configuration interface, where you can create as many size presets as you need. You can name your presets with words (Medium Size for Manual), but for a large list you may want to go with simple numbers, such as “720x400.”
Another Sizer feature I like is the tooltip that’s shown when you resize any window. This is optional, but if you keep it on (as I like to do), you get instant height and width information while resizing. Very useful for ad-hoc resizing when you don’t have a ready preset, but still need the window at a specific size. It can even be used as a simple on-screen ruler in a pinch, by grabbing a Notepad window and resizing it to measure distances between different website or screen elements.
The only slight issue I had with Sizer was when trying out its MSI installer. For some reason, the installer wouldn’t run correctly on my Windows 7 x64 test PC. I ended up downloading the ZIP package and manually extracting the application, and then everything worked just fine. The developer states that you must uninstall any .msi version of Sizer before installing a fresh copy, and that the program is only partially supported on 64-bit. I’ve been using it with Windows 7 x64 for about a year, and did not notice any issues.
Using Sizer, I was able to document a large application over the course of many weeks, always keeping my screenshots neat and consistent. If you take screenshots for a living, you probably need Sizer.
--Erez Zukerman
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.
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