Magnifier, formerly Microsoft Magnifier, is a
screen magnifier app intended for
visually impaired people to use when running
Microsoft Windows
Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...
. When it is running, it creates a bar at the top of the screen that greatly magnifies where the mouse is. ''Magnifier'' was first included as a sample in the
Active Accessibility SDK/RDK for
Windows 95
Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft and the first of its Windows 9x family of operating systems, released to manufacturing on July 14, 1995, and generally to retail on August 24, 1995. Windows 95 merged ...
and later made a standard Windows utility starting with
Windows 98
Windows 98 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of Microsoft Windows operating systems. It was the second operating system in the 9x line, as the successor to Windows 95. It was Software ...
. Prior to Windows Vista, Magnifier could be used to magnify the screen up to 9 times its normal size. Windows Vista and later allow up to 16×
magnification
Magnification is the process of enlarging the apparent size, not physical size, of something. This enlargement is quantified by a size ratio called optical magnification. When this number is less than one, it refers to a reduction in size, so ...
.
In
Windows Vista
Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, released five years earlier, which was then the longest time span between successive releases of Microsoft W ...
, ''Magnifier'' uses
WPF, which in turn uses vector images to render the content. As a result, the rendered magnified image is sharp and not pixelated. However, this is useful only for
Windows Presentation Foundation
Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) is a free and open-source user interface framework for Windows-based desktop applications. WPF applications are based in .NET, and are primarily developed using C# and XAML.
Originally developed by Microso ...
applications. Non-WPF applications are still magnified the traditional way. Also, due to a change introduced in WPF 3.5 SP1, this functionality is lost if .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 is installed.
Microsoft has also released a ''Magnification API'' to allow assistive technology applications to use the Magnifier engine.
Microsoft's
Windows 7
Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, ...
operating system includes a significantly improved version of Magnifier. It features full-screen magnification which allows a user to pan around the screen at up to 16× magnification.
However, the full screen feature has also been criticized due to its incompatibility with the high contrast color schemes found in the Windows 7 beta release. This issue remains in the final Windows 7 release. Besides this, when the magnifier zooms, the text will appear blurry or pixelated because it is not being directly rendered at the larger size; instead, the smaller sized rendering is being enlarged as a raster image.
ClearType
ClearType is Microsoft's implementation of subpixel rendering technology in rendering text in a font system. ClearType attempts to improve the appearance of text on certain types of computer display screens by sacrificing color fidelity for addit ...
sub-pixel anti-aliasing is also magnified as a result of this, so if ClearType is active, the magnified text may appear to have unexpected colors at the edges of non-horizontal lines. Some third party magnification software compensates for this effect by applying
scaling filters to the enlarged image.
The magnifier also features a lens mode similar to that found in the existing version of the software. Lens mode is improved, however, as now the magnifying window will follow the cursor around the screen rather than remain in a fixed position. Finally the magnifier is much easier to access by using the
Windows key
The Windows key (also known as win, start, logo, flag or super key) is a keyboard key originally introduced on Microsoft's Natural Keyboard in 1994. Windows 95 used it to bring up the start menu and it then became a standard key on PC ke ...
and +/- to control the zoom level without the need to start the application first.
[
] Pressing the Win+Esc combination will exit the magnifier.
References
External links
Accessibility in Windows VistaVideo of the Windows 7 Magnifier
{{Windows Components
Windows components
Screen magnifiers