Zoom It

ZoomIt is a freeware from Sysinternals which lets you zoom into part of your screen. With resolutions beyond 1600*1200 it becomes more urgent to have tools at your disposal that let you zoom into part of your screen to magnify that part. It is also nice if you want to take a closer look at low resolution images for instance.

ZoomIt displays a configuration menu at the first startup. You can configure hotkeys for various aspects of the tool (hotkey for Zooming, breaking and drawing). It is a great tool for presentations as well, if you run them using a notebook and beamer for instance. Zoom the important part so everyone gets a better view of that part.

The program is portable, which means that you can simply download and extract it to a location on your system. From there, you can simply run it to make use of it.

First thing that you may want to do is check the configured keyboard shortcuts. The program gives you options to change the keyboard shortcuts which you may want to do if they interfere with existing shortcuts, or if you prefer other shortcuts that are more easy to reach.

• Zoom lets you toggle the zoom feature on and off. Once activated, you can use the mouse wheel or up- and down-arrow keys to zoom in or out. You can return to normal mode by pressing Escape or clicking the right mouse button.
• Live Zoom is only supported on Vista or newer versions of Windows. The zoom level here is controlled with Ctrl-up and Ctrl-down. This basically shows updates on the screen while zoomed in.
• Draw lets you draw on the screen once zoom mode is active.
• when you are in drawing mode, tap on t to start typing on the screen. Exit typing mode with Escape or left mouse. You can also change the font size with the mouse wheel or up and down arrow keys, and select the font that you want to use in the program settings.
• Break starts a timer mode, which can be useful to display a timer during presentation, for instance to give students a task.

Advertisement