Window Resizing

Any words of wisdom on how to resize a window when the bottom right hand corner is off the screen? I have run into this problem a number of times on my SE/30 and just assume there is a trick to this that everyone knows except for me. So, for example, I try to set the preferences for Outlook Express 4.01 (still trying to get imap to work on a compact mac), but the page is bigger than the screen, and the resize corner is off the screen. Not only can I not save the preferences, I can't even get out of the preference window. In order to quit the application I have to turn the computer off by way of the switch on the back. There must be a better way.

Any thoughts or suggestions appreciated.

Tugboat

If it lets you then perhaps try hitting the enter key if it defaults to ok/save/etc or try esc to hit cancel.. but IDK how far back that sort of stuff goes or what OS you are using.

As I recall, a lot of software was configured for 640x480 which meant if a default window opened, it would not fit on a compact Mac screen. AFAIK, there is no way to resize the window. Ran into this a lot in the mid 90s.

I am running 7.5.5.

If there is no way around this (ps have you tried force quitting instead of switching the computer off?), there was a utility for Compact Macs that let you squash the screen or let you pan around the screen with a bigger resolution. Anyone remember what it was called?

I assume the Outlook preferences you mention is not a regular window, but a dialog box... they have no resizing controls at all, but there's a dirty trick that could help: use ResEdit to change the layout of that dialog, trying to cram it into the reduced SE/30 screen.

WARNING: ResEdit is a very powerful tool, but also extremely dangerous. ALWAYS keep a backup copy of the file you're about to edit, just in case you screw it up!

Disclaimer said, here are the detailed instructions:

1) Drag the application over the ResEdit icon; a big window full of icons will open.

2) Double-click the DITL icon; another window with a text list will open.

3) Now you have to browse (double-clik) thru all these items in the list, until you recognize the offending dialog box... note the ID on the window title and you can move and resize the elements as you like! A couple of notes, though:

•Be certain to click on every item shown, even those apparently using little space -- some text fields have much more reserved space and may hide other elements when they get too close... just edit as needed.

•Regardless of the type of dialog box, the items appear in a movable window. Even if it's much wider than your screen, you can move it from side to side. But if the window is too tall, you'll have no access to the bottom items! (not until MacOS 8, anyway). You're better doing this editing procedure in another Mac with bigger screen, if available.

4) When you have no more DITL resources (the layout of alerts and dialog boxes) to edit, close the list and try to find the selected IDs on the list from the icon DLOG -- or the ALRT icon, if not found there. Double-click to open another editing window.

5) You may now change the coordinates of both position and size of the box, either by typing new values or graphically, just dragging the represented dialog (conveniently rescaled) from the middle, or changing its size thru the small black resizing control (bottom right, as usual). In the MiniScreen menu you may check how will it look on several screen sizes; set it to 512x342 (Classic) for the SE/30 screen.

6) Close every window and confirm ResEdit to save the changes. You're done!

Once again, this is a dirty fix: things won't look beautiful or may cease to work at all. But it's the only way I know of making the dialog items fit into a smaller-than-expected screen.

On the other hand... if the Outlook preferences are shown in a regular window (with title bar) you may try to move it all the way to the left, in order to see the hidden rightmost part -- if there's a zoom control, clicking it should resize the window to the maximum allowed by your screen, actually reducing it in your case.

Hope this helps,

Woah there. There are control panels or extensions around that will help with this. Unfortunately I forget what they were called. I would suggest having a hunt for those first. I think one was called Move Any Window?

Thank you all. Using Bunsen's post as a starting point I was able to locate a control panel that largely addresses this problem, i.e. "DragAnyWindow." At the same time, I'm saving zuiko21's advice for those few times it does not work.

Tugboat

Bumping the topic because this is a great tip, and may be helpful during #Marchintosh and the renewed interest in vintage computing.

I had this problem recently on an LC with a 12" Apple RGB monitor, where some glitch in Finder allowed me to drag a window above the menu bar, rendering it unreachable. DragAnyWindow saved the day.

Stepping Out II is a control panel that emulates a larger screen.

joevt said:

Stepping Out II is a control panel that emulates a larger screen.

Click to expand...

Yes this is brillant. It got round pretty much all the limitations of smaller screens.

You just setup a virtual screen size based on how much memory your Mac had and never needed to a scroll again!
You would just move or flick the mouse and could jump around the whole virtual screen almost instantly as the image was stored in RAM.
I suspect this was faster than even using a large physical screen, particularly if you were using a slower Mac as you would still need to scroll on those screens. It was also about a thousand times cheaper as Stepping Out II was inexpensive at the time.

I used it with an SE fitted with a 16MHzv 68020 accelerator and 4MB of RAM and was able to create gigantic virtual screens as large as a kitchen table to draw very large circuit diagrams. On my SE/30 with has 20MB of RAM it was easily possible to create virtual screen the size of a large room.
This is my second favourite software for the Macintosh ever!

One final suggestion that also worked for me before I got Stepping Out II was to use Quickeys or Tempo II to create a macro that runs an operation to resize a window. You can program almost anything with those programs and hit a key to trigger them. I preferred the ADB Extended keyboard so I could setup all those extra function keys to do handy little tasks like this instantly.