Ruler

Building an interface for a program or a page layout isn’t all just about adding a few pictures to look cool. Perfect blending of elements relies on accurate measuring of pixels on screen. In this regard, Ruler comes as a simple tool you can always have at hand to measure almost anything on screen.

One of its few advantages is portability. As a consequence, you can leave it stored on a thumb drive to use on other computers without having to go through a setup process or download operation. Moreover, the health status of the target PC remains intact because registry entries are not affected by runtime.

Running the application can leave you a little disappointed. One aspect contributing here is the visual design itself. Although it’s not much to look at, most of the window space is empty and doesn’t really have a purpose, but on the contrary, gets in the way of everything.

The main window is fitted with horizontal and vertical marks which read pixels. The more you stretch the main window, the larger the rulers get, but there’s a maximum value you can reach. What’s more, without a transparency option having it take up the entire screen is really against the purpose since you can’t see anything to measure.

A simple workaround is to limit the main window size to a single orientation, either vertically or horizontally. On the bright side here, there’s the possibility to launch multiple instances of the program for more rulers, but at the cost of visual space.

Taking everything into consideration, we can state that even for a simple measuring tool, Ruler leaves much to be desired. Practicality wouldn’t have been at such a low level if the main window was fitted with a transparency option to be able to see elements in the background that you want to measure.