The Author – Bart Busschots
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Feb
27
A Nice Free Tool for Measuring Pixel Sizes on Screen
Filed Under Computers & Tech on February 27, 2007 at 9:23 pm
It’s often handy to figure out how big elements on your screen are in pixels. The freeware tool Free Ruler lets you do just that. This is another example of the kind of Mac programs I really like, those that do just one thing but do it very well. The program really couldn’t be simpler. You get a semi-transparent ruler that floats over the screen that you can move around. You actually get two rulers at 90o to each other and you can resize both independently though they move together. There’s not really much more to say about this tool so I’ll leave you with a screen shot.
[tags]OS X, Apple, Software, Free Ruler[/tags]
MeasureIt is a nice plugin for firefox
http://www.kevinfreitas.net/extensions/measureit/
that does the same thing.
That’s pretty cool actually …. though it is limited strictly to the browser. The nice thing about Free Ruler is that you can move it around anywhere on your screen. Mind you, most of the times you need to measure stuff it is for webdesign so being limited to the browser environment really isn’t that big of a problem.
Nice tool, thanks!
Typed “tool for measuring pixels” into Google and look who popped up! Saw the name Bart Busschots and knew I could trust whatever you were recommending. Going to download Free Ruler now. Thanks.
Todd McCann
https://twitter.com/ToddMcCann
http://abouttruckingjobs.wordpress.com/

Hi there,
I know this post is kind of old but I just had to make sure you know what’s the new thing in measure department. Take a look at http://pixf.it
PixFit is a tool that automatically measures objects on your screen by analyzing it’s contents. It finds the edges of an object and shows you the dimensions giving you an option to copy those dimensions to the clipboard. Check it out it’s quite nice!
Cheers!
Hi PixFit – I use ScreenFlow to record screen casts, but it’s not a cheap app. It does work well though.
Bart.