Using HotBox is super easy! First you set up a hot key that, when pressed, will activate HotBox. (More on that in the next section.)
Once HotBox is active, the cursor will turn into this:
This means you can click and drag a box
around part of the screen. Once you let go of the
mouse button, the screen will zoom in on the portion
you selected so that it fits your monitor as perfectly
as possible! Optionally the rest of the screen will
fade out too.
When HotBox is active, you can press the spacebar to change the cursor into this:
When the cursor is green, rather than
clicking and dragging, all you have to do is move the
cursor over some portion of the screen you want to
zoom in on. It could be a window, a movie in a
webpage, a picture, or pretty much any kind of user
interface grouping. The part that will be zoomed will
be highlighted green. Just click the mouse, and the
screen will zoom in on it!
At any point you can press escape to deactivate HotBox.
Configuring HotBox:
To configure HotBox, use its preference pane located in the System Preferences.
It looks an awful lot like this:
Here is what the various buttons do:
Start HotBox / Quit HotBox - Launches of quits the HotBox helper application. If the HotBox application is not running, then HotBox won't work!
Keystroke to activate HotBox - This lets you set what system-wide hot key will activate HotBox. By default it's Command-Option-1, but you can make it anything you like.
Start in "Box Dragging" mode - With this button selected, once HotBox becomes active the cursor will be blue and you can drag a box around part of the screen to zoom in on it. Press spacebar to change to the green cursor and back again.
Start in "Group Selection" mode - With this button selected, HotBox will start with the cursor green meaning rather than clicking and dragging to draw a box, you can just click a highlighted element of the screen.
Fade out the non-zoomed area while zoomed - If this button is selected, the parts of the screen you don't select will fade out to black when zooming in, so all you can see is the area you wanted to zoom in on.
Don't allow keystrokes while zoomed - If you don't want the keyboard to do anything while zoomed, click this button. (That doesn't include escape - escape will always zoom out.)
Start HotBox at login - Makes the HotBox helper application launch when you log in, so you don't have to start it yourself.
Support and Troubleshooting:
Here I give lip service to the various problems you hopefully won't have using HotBox.
1. The preference pane is telling me I need to turn on something called "Enable access for assistive devices":
Some of the features in HotBox, namely "group selection mode" and "don't allow keystrokes while zoomed" require that feature to be enabled. It can be turned on in the "Universal Access" preference pane. If you don't want to turn it on, you can keep using HotBox in "box dragging" mode just fine.
2. I tried to zoom in on something, but no zooming happened!
Whoops! That's a bug. Email me with information about what you did to trigger it and I'll see if I can fix it.
3. I tried to activate HotBox using my hot key, but it keeps giving me this window:
That window appears when one or both of the universal access hot keys for zooming in and out can't be typed in your current keyboard layout. They don't have to be enabled, but in some circumstances the actual keys they're set to might not be typable. For example, the default keystrokes for zooming are Command Option minus and Command Option equals, but in the German keyboard layout the equals key isn't typable without using modifier keys, so there'd be no way to zoom in. To fix this problem, just follow the instructions in the window. Make sure the hot keys you set for zooming in and out are typable in all the keyboard layouts you'll be using regularly to ensure this window won't appear again. (This window shouldn't appear in Mac OS X 10.4.x.)
4. When zoomed in, I moved the mouse and all of a sudden everything shifted around. Now it's not zoomed in on the right thing or nothing at all!
There's certain circumstances where that can happen. I've noticed it's easier when zooming in on the corner of the screen or when there's multiple monitors. I'm working on fixing it, but I can't say for certain when I'll finish. In case that happens, just zoom out, try zooming in again, and be careful not to move the mouse too much.
5. HotBox crashed while I was zoomed in and now I can't zoom out!
Hopefully this won't ever happen, and so far in my experience it hasn't, but in case you get stuck zoomed in there's two ways to fix it:
1. Press and hold the zoom out keystroke. This is usually Command Option minus.
2. Hold control and scroll down on your scroll wheel (or trackpad).
Feature Requests!
I want to be able to use the mouse and click on stuff while zoomed in!!!
You and me both! That might not be possible, but I *am* going to work on it. Hopefully in a future version of HotBox I'll be able to include this feature.
I have another different feature request!
I can't make any guarantees about what I can add and what I'll have time to add, but it can't hurt to email me and suggest something. Maybe I'll add it in!