What Is It?

Zonesize is a simple utility whose sole purpose is to predefine window sizing templates on your monitor. These zones can be defined by pixel position or as a percentage of the screen size and they can overlap which is what makes the utility really useful. You simply drag the window over the zone and it automatically resizes to fit. It is one of the many “1 Hour Software” utilities from Skrommel at DonationCoder.

Why Would You Want It?

There are often times when you need to have 2 or more windows displayed on the same screen where you are using both programs at once. For instance you may be viewing a browser window while writing to another document. In these situations you may also want to drag and drop text or graphics from one window to the other. Zonesize allows you to have a predefined set of window sizes or zones to suit your working pattern

How Do You Use it?

Having defined the zones you wish to use you simply drag the window over the zone and allow it to resize automatically within a predefined time (user definable). You can drag the window from one zone to another to suit your required working arrangements.

Why Do I Want It?

I generally manage quite well with a 2 monitor “multi-monitor setup but there are times when I need access to more windows. Zonesize not only allows me to predefine some windows sizes for my working area across both monitors, it also allows for overlapping zones and zones within zones as you will see later. The benefits of overlapping zones, as is demonstrated in the example below, is the ability to quickly make windows active by clicking on the non-overlapped areas. Using a utility to keep windows “always on top” such as DeskPins - Help to Stop Other Windows Stealing Focus further enhances the use of Zonesize so that you can keep a smaller windows always on top within another larger window.

Note: In carrying out this review I have also come across:

Auto Window Manager from Eusing Software

Gridmove from JGPaiva at DonationCoder

which may be even better,I will check them out shortly.

What Does It Do - The Essentials?

Summary:

• Resizes Windows to predefined “Zone” sizes by dragging

Pros: What’s Good?

Features & Benefits

• Freeware

• Portable
• Simple to Use
• Can be set to ignore certain Windows*
• Useful Options & Settings

* This is an important option as some fixed size windows do not respond well to being resized

Cons:What’s Not So Good?

• Limited “Help” or user information*

*However this review will help you

More About What it Does in Detail:

The DonationCoder website gives the following detail here ZoneSize

ZoneSize v1.0

Define zones that autosize windows dropped on them.
Features:
- Hold a window over a zone for .5 sec to autosize it.
- Doubleclick the tray icon to center the active window.

Having downloaded the executable and running the program from your selected location the following screens and menus are provided:

This review will follow the usual format of presenting the majority of information as screenshots backed up by further information where necessary.

(click on any picture to enlarge where necessary)

System Tray Icon

Right clicking on the systray icon brings up the following dialog:

About Screen

This is all self explanatory

Settings Screen

This is divided into 4 main sections:

Zones:

Here you define the size of the zones you want to use. You can either define these as a percentage of the screen size with top left as 0%, 0% and bottom right as 100%,100% OR you can define absolute positions as pixels with top left being 0,0 and bottom right depends on your screen size.

1. I have found defining absolute positions using pixels works well with my multi-monitor setup.
2. For a smaller zone within a larger zone it seems that the smaller zone needs to be defined before the larger in the list

When checked the “Show zones” tickbox allows the zones to be defined by a light line when a window is being dragged as can be seen in the screen shot below.

The following screenshot has coloured boxes added so you can see how the zones defined in the settings

actually appear :

Explanation of why I set the zones above

1. The Green and Blue Zones split the monitor horizontally but leave a small margin on the left of the screen
2. The Red Zone is almost a full screen window but leaves a small margin on the right
3. This enables me to click on the left or right margin areas to bring the relevant windows into focus to use without having to resort to the taskbar or using “Alt-Tab”
4. The small Yellow Zone can be used to place an always on top window
   (probably if you were doing this for real it would be better positioned bottom left but this was just as an example)

Time to hover before resizing

A simple way to set the time in 1/10 seconds.

Classes to ignore

Here you can enter a comma separated list of Windows Classes to be ignore if dragged into a zone.

To find the windows class you can use a freeware utility such as Greatis Windowse

Part of window titles to ignore

Allows entry of a comma separated list of “part” titles of windows to be ignored if dragged into a zone

N.B. Earlier comment that some Windows with a fixed size behave badly or even freeze if resized, Windows Home Server Console is a good example which is why I have it defined in the list.

The “Ignore titleless” windows tickbox does just what it says when checked.

What are the Technical Details & Compatibility?

What is the ProReviewer Experience?

This is a very useful utility to help manage windows sizes and improve productivity where you need to be working between several windows at the same time. This sits in my Portable Applications Suite folder along with many other DonationCoder Utilities.

Personally I rate this as:

Simple- Stable - Good options - Useful

What Could Make it be Better?

The philosophy behind Skrommel’s 1 Hour Software is to produce a small functional utility relatively quickly.

Therefore it is not reasonable to expect that changes should or would be implemented.

I will however list some thing that I would like to see in an ideal utility of this type.

1. Automatic sizing and positioning of defined windows
2. Draw zone and/or /Drag zone edges to define size
3. Add “Always on top” functionality
4. Allow to redefine Systray Icon doubleclick to move active window to a zone

What Other Posts are Relevant?

TIP - Stop Applications in Windows Stealing Focus

DonationCoder Freeware Utilities

TaskSwitchXP - So Much More Than a Task Changer

Why You Want to Use Portable Freeware Applications

DeskPins - Help to Stop Other Windows Stealing Focus

Why I decided to Write This Blog

Qliner Hotkeys - Easily Set, View & Use Windows Hotkeys

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This entry was posted on Sunday, June 15th, 2008 at 8:51 pm and is filed under Portable Freeware. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.