LittleArea

Screen Scales is a program that gives you the ability to drag markers around your screen to measure the distance between two points. A friend of mine and I worked on this project together to come up with what we thought would be a useful utility. This is not an original idea by any means as there are a few different programs out there that are similar. However, we added a few features that we thought may be helpful to someone somewhere even though we may not make use of them ourselves.

This project was built entirely in Flash CS3 using Actionscript 3 and published with AIR. If you are unsure what AIR is, it is Adobe’s Runtime that allows developers to create Flash applications that run on the desktop with extended support for things such as the file system that are otherwise inaccessible to Flash. AIR is also cross-platform with Windows, Mac OSX, and some *nix support. We have tested this application on Windows XP and Vista and Ubuntu 9.04. It should also run in Mac OSX.

Now on to the features!

Multiple Line Segments
You can have as many line segments as you would like at one time. They are all connected in a long string from point to point. You can drag any point around the screen to measure multiple things at once. To add points simply right click on an existing point and choose Add Point. This will add an additional point to the end of the string and connect it to the previous end. Removing points works the same way however it will remove the point that you clicked on and not the last one created.

Display Height & Width Deltas
Since the points can be moved anywhere on the screen, you are able to measure diagonal distances. You can turn on a feature which will show you not only the main measurement but also the horizontal and vertical distances (deltas) as well. To toggle this view on and off, simply right click a point (or a line if you can hit it) and click the Show Deltas option. This is a toggle and will show or hide the delta values accordingly.

Display Angle Measurements
Have you ever needed to measure the angle of something on the screen? Yeah, me neither, but if it ever comes up now you can! The angle toggle works the same as the delta toggle, just right click and select Show Angles. The angles will display in two different ways depending on the visibility of the deltas. If the deltas are visible it will display the angle between the main line and the horizontal and vertical lines. If the deltas are hidden, the angle will display between two main lines (meaning you have to have 3 or more points for them to become visible). Try both views out, they are kind of fun to play with.

Display Accumulative Totals
This feature allows you to measure the total distance across multiple line segments. If you have 3 points or more the total distance from the beginning point will be displayed on each subsequent segment after the first. It is noted by adding parenthesis around the totaled numbers ( ### ). This is another toggle in the right click menu to display them or display the standard distances.

Custom Scale Factor
Sometimes it may be useful to measure distances in something other than screen pixels. You can set a custom scale factor by selecting Set Scale Factor from the right click menu. A smaller disconnected line segment will appear with a box in the middle of it. Simply drag the two points to set a reference distance and type into the box how far it is between two points. All of the distances will automatically be adjusted by this scale factor.

An example of where this may be useful is if you are looking at a map. There is commonly a small scale in one of the corners that shows you how far 10 miles may be. You can pull up the custom scale and set the end points on the scale and type in 10. All of your distances will then be based on that scale and instead if it displaying 357 pixels from city to city, it will display the approximate distance for example 75.4 if that happened to be the correct scale.

To set the scale back to normal just right click again and choose Default Scale Factor. This will return the measurements to pixels.

Colors
To accommodate different colors on your screen, be it an image or an application, we made it possible to change the color of the markers, lines, and text. There are a few different options, simply select the Colors… option from the right click menu. A new menu will display in place of the original one and you can then choose your color scheme.

Always On Top
This option is another toggle and simply makes the application stay above everything else. This can be useful when measuring another full screen application so it doesn’t pop in front of your measurements if you accidentally activate the other application.

Dynamic Input
This feature allows you to specify exactly the distance you want to see instead of having to try and drag a line to a specific length. Simply double click a distance label (this can be tricky sometimes depending on what numbers are in there) and type the distance you want to see and press enter. The line will be adjusted to the distance you specified.

Depending on which length you adjust, the angle may be adjusted as well. Changing the length of a main line will not affect the angle of the line, it will stay fixed. However, adjusting the length of a delta distance will adjust the angle to accommodate the new distance.

The rest of the menu is pretty self-explanatory so I won’t waste my time and yours writing about them.

Saved Settings
All of the options are saved as you change them. So the next time you launch the program, your colors and display options should be restored. The only thing that is not stored is if you are using a custom scale and the actual location of the end points. If we find it would be beneficial to save this information, we will update the program to do so.

Limitations
This program will only function properly if you have an operating system that supports transparent windows. It should still work, you just won’t be able to see what you are trying to measure as it will fill in the area with a solid color.

Dual monitor support is mostly supported. Because of limitations with Flash and/or AIR the maximum window size is 2880 pixels wide and there may be a vertical maximum as well but I have not come across it so far at 1200 tall. What does this mean? You will not be able to measure the far right edge of your screen if your resolution goes past 2880 pixels. My dual monitor setup is 3200 wide when adding the width of both together, so I cannot measure the last 320 pixels.

Performance is affected by how far away from the top left corner your points are. If you are measuring near the top left corner, the program runs very smoothly. The further away from that point you get, the more “laggy” it becomes. Overall, the performance is pretty decent on the left screen and I don’t notice too much lag until I am over on my second screen. The number of line segments you have and the amount of information you are displaying (deltas, angles) will also affect performance but in a very insignificant way. It runs perfectly well with 10 line segments with deltas and angles both visible as long as I stay on my primary screen.

That’s about all I have for this project. I may add a few posts to demonstrate what we did to accomplish different aspects of the project. Please feel free to download and share the application and leave comments letting us know what you think about it. Also feel free to request new features or changes and we will look into them.