Pedro Liska's Blog

Image Resizer

Installation Instructions

Download the installer, unzip it, and run SETUP.EXE . You may download the installer here

About The Resizer

I made this free resizer because I needed a free app that would easily resize images in bulk (all at once). I looked around for an app like this and found some good ones but once the trial was over, you had to pay to use them. This one is 100% free. I created it using C# and Microsoft Visual Studio .Net . This is how the application looks like:

Features You Must Try

If you’ve used the resizer for a while, or if it’s your first time, you really want to try dragging-and-dropping your images into the Resizer’s window (see Figure 1 below) and using the “Send To” menu (Figure 2) to send the images you wish to resize with the resizer.

There is a known problem with the “Send To” feature, look further down the page for more information.

Figure 1

Figure 2

Version Information

Read the changelog to find out what’s new the latest version.

System Requirements

This application needs the .NET Framework 2.0 to run. If you’re using Windows, it’s you already have it on your computer. If you don’t, my installer will automatically get it off the Microsoft website.

If you’re not using Windows, it will be hard to get my app working. Mostly because it’s hard to get the .NET Framework 2.0 working on another OS that’s not Windows. I have personally never tried to do this.

Known Issue

If you send a lot of files (more than about 15) to the “Send To” menu item, you
get an error window that says: “Windows cannot access the specified device, path,
or file. You may not have the appropriate permissions to access the item.”

After digging around the web I learned that the cause of this problem is that if
you’re sending multiple files, the aggregate length of the full paths and names
for all of those files must be less than 2048 characters.

To work arround this problem I’d have to write a shell extension (in plain English:
Some code that will be run by Windows Explorer) to override the way multiple files
are sent to the Resizer’s executable.

If someone is an expert at this I could use some assistance as I have not implemented
many Win32 interfaces with C#. I do want to do it the .NET way. There are several
pages that say that you should “never” write shell extensions with .NET because
if the user doesn’t have the .NET Framework installed, you can make other applications
crash. Note that this is not an issue in my case since I know that all the users
of my resizer will have the .NET Framework 2.0 on their computer. If they ever uninstall
my resizer, I will make sure the shell extension is removed from their computer
so if in the future they wish to uninstall the .NET Framework they could do it and
nothing would break.

More details can be found here:

• Here, I found someone that experienced the same problem and knew what
  it was. He’s also hinting which Win32 interfaces I have to implement: IDropTarget
  and IPersistFile::Load()
• In this link, Dino Esposito (who by the way ROCKS!), explains how to add a context menu to Windows Explorer. This is a feasible workaround for my problem. I say workaround because what I would really want is to use the SendTo menu like the “Compressed (zipped) folder” menu item does it.