[thelist] Size-O-Matic - something fishy 'bout it?

George Dillon george.dillon at ukonline.co.uk
Fri Dec 29 09:28:08 CST 2000


Can anyone shed some light on this?

A while ago Size-O-matic was recommended on this list - a simple freeware
app that lets you resize windows by simply dragging and dropping preset
dimensions with the most common monitor dimensions in-built.

Of obvious value to web designers...

So I tried it and found it useful... but then I noticed some very odd and
worrying behaviour.

The odd things happen when using a custom size.  I have my monitor set to
1280x1024, so for my own general browsing purposes I created a custom
setting of 800x1000.  However, as soon as I click on that size (ready to
drag and drop it) 3 odd (and BAD) things start happening:

1.  The delete button (in Size-o-matic) starts flickering... ok no big deal.

2.  If I'm on-line, Zonealarm tells me that Size-O-matic is attempting to
connect to the internet.  Now this worries me.  I don't like apps that try
to connect to the internet without warning me (and for no legitimate purpose
that I can discern), but what baffles and worries me even more is that this
only happens when I have a live internet connection.  How on earth can
Size-O-Matic know this?

3.  TaskInfo 2000 reports Size-o-matic demanding 90% or more of my CPU usage
(on an Athlon 800!).

My guess is that all 3 symptoms are related.  I thought it might just be a
bug, so I tried going back to the pythoness site for an updated version, and
all I found was a message saying the site's being updated.  Nor can I find
the download anywhere else on the net, except for one ftp site in Russia
which only works at about 84 bytes per second.

I've run Norton Antivirus on it (with latest defs) and it came up clean.  I
also tried (in an amateur way) to look at what was in the program (using the
built-in hex viewer in Textpad) and I found a reference to "Virus alert!"...
which again got me wondering why should this app contain such a thing at
all?

Any thoughts?

Or has anyone got a different (or later) version than mine?  [I downloaded
SizeOMatic.zip (224,490 bytes) from the pythoness site on 17/11/00.  It
contains one file - SizeOMatic.exe (236,544 bytes) file version 1.0.0.33
dated 09/03/99]

George Dillon


<tip type="FREEWARE">

Fed up of switching res just to test web pages in different sizes of browser
window (losing control over your icons and other complaints)?
Suspicious of Size-O-Matic?

http://www.mlin.net/misc.shtml
WindowSizer is another brilliant mini-app by wonderkind Mike Linn (aged 16).
It's so simple that once you've used it, you'll wonder why it's not part of
every OS. WindowSizer will allow you to set the size of any open window to
any specific size, so you can set your browser to 640x480, 800x600, or
ANYTHING x ANYTHING (within your existing screen res). It will also tell you
the size of any open window, so you can test the other way round, i.e. (in
IE) you can open your 'fluid' page in a browser window, and gradually reduce
its width until you get scrollbars (or whatever else breaks), and then read
off the min. width at which the site works as expected.

While you're at Mike Lin's site, have a good look around and grab some other
stuff too... some more of his apps which I find essential are:

Start Up Control Panel - for quick access to start-up settings
http://www.mlin.net/StartupCPL.shtml

Start Up Monitor - alerts when an app tries to add itself to your start-ups
http://www.mlin.net/StartupMonitor.shtml

TraySaver - recover gracefully from explorer crashes and more
http://www.mlin.net/TraySaver.shtml
(n.b. go for version 5 as the later betas are indeed blighted).

</tip>














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