When Joan tipped us off about a new application she'd written to help users manipulate window positions and size using the keyboard rather than mouse, I jumped at the chance to write it up. Of course, with the business of the holidays, I promptly managed to forget I'd claimed this download to blog about. Oh well, I'm getting around to it now, and I think it's worth the wait.

Joan's utility is called reSizer, and it's one of those ones that probably takes a bit of time to grow on you, but I suspect it also has a very good chance of becoming a "must have utility" for those of us that are extremely keyboard-centric.

reSizer works by leveraging the somewhat underused Windows key that most keyboards sport, in conjunction with the arrow (cursor) keys, and the numeric keypad. Unfortunately, it's one of those programs that you sort of have to use before you really "get" it, but if it piques your interest, I think it's worth the quick download.

Once running, you can easily move open windows around by simply typing Win-(arrow key) to move the window a few pixels in the directly you typed. Adding Shift to the key combination allows you to move windows very precisely.

More interestingly, windows can be quickly moved to 9 specific positions based on the numeric keypad; the top-left position is 7, the bottom-right is 3, and the middle is 5. This can be very handy to arrange a few open windows efficiently on your screen.

Where this utility really shines is in its ability to resize windows using these same numeric keys; typing CTRL-WIN-