Friday, May 27, 2011

Mimic Compiz Zoom in Windows 7

The most thing that i miss once i log into windows is the compiz zoom using the winkey and the mouse wheel feature on linux , i tried to search for alternative but with no luck each time till i read an article recently on lifehacker which shows that the new built in magnifier in windows 7 has a mode to magnify the whole screen rather than certain part (aka docked mode) , that was great news except the shortcut keys are Winkey +/- and can't be changed !!.

After some searching i found a program called autohotkey that could serve me in solving this issue , any way if you aren't into technical details you can grab the compiled version and start using it immediately.
Otherwise , here is the complete source code of the script
; Created By :
;     Ahmed Kotb on 27/5/2011
; licensed under :
;     Creative commons Attribution 3.0
;     http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/
; version :
;     1.0

; A small script that enables you to zoom in/out using the winkey
; and mouse wheel instead of winkey +/- on windows7 magnifier program

#NoEnv
SendMode Input
SetWorkingDir %A_ScriptDir%

;zoom in
#WheelUp::send #{sc4E}
;zoom out
#WheelDown::send #{sc4A}

You may need to alter the default zoom value instead of 100%  to a more usable amount , iam fine with 25%

Hope you find it useful.

3 comments:

gray said...

brilliant - thanks for posting this tip. Even with this Win 7 zoom is still nowhere near as smooth and usable as compiz zoom which can be quite organic and fluid to use. Until I get around to dual booting ubuntu on this laptop this will keep me happy.

Ahmed Kotb said...

glad that you liked it :)

Anonymous said...

Great idea!

And I use the magnifier quite a bit (visually impaired sysadmin)

One thing I've noticed though. If you disabled Windows 7's hotkeys via registry (nowinkeys) and use the magnifier via windows key and plus/minus, when one zooms in (+) it will add +'s into notepad/IM clients/any app that has text input.

If I don't set the nowinkeys option in the registry, then it's fine.

The reason I disable the stock Windows hotkeys is so I can claim win+1,2,3,4,5 etc; (quiclaunch) so I can bind them to my virtual desktop manager.

Nowinkeys can be set via:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer]
"NoWinKeys"=dword:00000002

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