Computer Screen Magnifier

Martin — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 08:56:13 +0000

The Windows operating system comes with a magnifier that can be used to magnify parts of the computer screen. It can be started by opening a run dialog window with [Windows R], typing [magnify] and hitting [enter]. The magnifier has a few limitations, the main being that it will always display the magnified part of the screen in a fixed window on the screen. This means that the user has to concentrate both on the mouse cursor and the part where the magnified screen is shown.

A better and more natural computer screen magnifier would be one that would magnify the screen around the cursor position. That is what Magical Glass brings to the table. The computer screen magnifier is completely hotkey driven. Hotkeys are available to turn the screen magnifier on and off, to lock it on the computer desktop, to zoom in or out, to change the size of the part of the screen that is magnified, to change the brightness and to capture the part of the screen.

The main hotkey is [CTRL ALT Q] which will turn on or off the screen magnifier. The rest of the functions can be accessed from the num pad on the keyboard.

The software is low on resources while running in the background. It uses about 3.2 Megabytes of computer memory which goes up to about 8 Megabytes when the magnifier is turned on.

Tags: Computer Screen Magnifier, computer software, loupe, magical glass, magnify screen, screen magnifier, windows software

Screen Magnifier

Martin — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 17:04:30 +0000

It is sometimes quite handy to have a screen magnifier at hand to magnify part of the computer screen. This can be useful for reading small text on websites or for viewing images in greater detail. You might say that such functions, to increase the text size and to zoom into images already exists in those programs and while I have to agree with that it is sometimes faster and easier to use a screen magnifier.

Screen Magnifiers are also very handy for presentations, be it Powerpoint presentations or videocasts that you want to upload to a video portal or your website afterwards. One of the best screen magnifiers that I tested is called Virtual Magnifying Glass available on Sourceforge. The magnifier can be started with a keyboard shortcut and moved around with the mouse. The mouse wheel is used to zoom in and out of the current position.

The dimensions of the magnifier can be defined in the options, they range from 64 pixels in width and height to 1600 pixels in each. Both width and height have independent settings. The magnification can be set to a default value between 1x and 16x as well but as I stated earlier it is possible to change that value on the fly.

On the downside, it is not possible to scroll when in magnifying mode. Virtual Magnifying Glass is available for Windows, Linux and Macintosh.

Tags: screen magnifier, software, Windows

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