Small Screen - Width guides for web page designs

Sep 24, '04 11:04:00AM

Contributed by: robg

Artis Small Screen The macosxhints Rating:
9 of 10
[Score: 9 out of 10]

Late again, I know. No good excuses this time, just been busy with a lot of stuff. Some of that stuff involves designing the next major upgrade to macosxhints, which means I've been spending a lot of time looking at various layouts, trying to make sure they work for as many viewers as possible. One of my goals is to make sure that macosxhints will fit in an 800 pixel wide browser window, which is about as narrow as it can possibly get. To test the design's look at this small size, I've been using ARTIS Software's Small Screen program, which is part of their Screen Tools package.

Small Screen creates a thin black border that 'floats' over all other windows. You choose the size you'd like to see -- 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x1024, or a custom size, and the outlines then appear on the screen. You can then resize various browser windows to fit the outlines, giving you an instant look at your site on a smaller screen. A simple tool, and it does its job well.

My only wish is for some sort of 'global shortcut' for switching screen sizes. As it works now, if you want to switch between the various window sizes, you first have to switch to Small Screen, then invoke a hotkey for the desired size, and then switch back to the browser window. I'm not sure exactly how it would work, but I'd love to be able to make a global hotkey for it that would work in any app, so I can save the first switch.

For your $9.95, you actually get the full Screen Tools package, which also includes a screen ruler, a "loupe" to magnify a portion of the screen and capture the pixel color to the clipboard, and (very useful) screen guides, which allow you to add alignment guides to programs that don't support them natively. Quite a bargain, and you can try all four of them before you decide to fork over your $9.95.

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