CrossHair
CrossHair displays two full-screen lines intersecting your mouse cursor when you press a hot key. As you move the mouse cursor, the lines follow over any program or window. The program is tiny, and runs completely transparently until you call up the crosshairs. It's useful for eyeballing any kind of chart or tabular data on screen, and for aligning objects in graphics or design applications. For example, mouse over these screenshots:
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| Download | Tip Jar | ||||
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Download CrossHair 1.1 (72kb zip containing setup MSI) |
This program is free! But please consider making a small donation to the Tip Jar.
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System requirements: I have tested CrossHair on Windows XP and Windows Vista. Let me know how it goes if you try it on an older version of Windows.
Upgrade instructions: To upgrade from a previous version, make sure the CrossHair Configuration window is closed, and run the installer for the new version.
CrossHair was the idea of Richard Janowicz. Visit his site at trading-futures-with-technical-analysis.com.
Using CrossHair
The setup program will automatically enable CrossHair. At any time, press one of the the activation hotkeys to make the crosshairs appear. There are two activation hotkeys:
- Roving hotkey: press to make the crosshairs follow your mouse as you move it around. The default roving hotkey is Control+Backtick, as shown at the left.
- Stationary hotkey: press to make the crosshairs remain fixed at your mouse cursor's current location. The default stationary hotkey is Control+1. (The 1 key is adjacent to Backtick on most keyboards.)
You don't hold the activation hotkey down. Instead, press it again to make the crosshairs disappear. You can always move and click the mouse while the crosshairs are displayed, in either mode.
The default hotkeys are chosen so that a right-handed person can keep the right hand on the mouse. Of course, you can change them to something else in the configuration window. Another tip: while the crosshairs are displayed in roving mode, you can press the stationary hotkey to make them stick to their current location. Conversely, when the crosshairs are stationary, you can press the roving hotkey to move them around.
The setup program will also create an icon for CrossHair in the Quick Launch area of the taskbar. Press this icon to make the crosshairs appear and disappear in roving mode. If you don't want this icon, just right-click and delete it.
To configure CrossHair, open Start > Programs > CrossHair Configuration. From here, you can enable and disable the program, change the activation hotkeys, and adjust the appearance of the crosshair lines. Not all key combinations for the hotkeys will work; make sure to test whatever you choose. If you accidentally changed the hotkey and you're having trouble changing it back because the crosshairs appear when you press the hotkey, press Disable and try again.
CrossHair can be uninstalled from the Add/Remove Programs control panel.
You can move the CrossHair Configuration shortcut to another location in your start menu, but don't delete it: since CrossHair does not use that overloaded taskbar notification area, there is no other way to access the configuration menu. If you do lose the configuration shortcut, you can either reinstall the program, or, if you know how, create a new shortcut to CrossHair.exe that passes the /config switch.
For additional help and support, please visit the discussion forum.
Copyright © 1999-2007 by Mike Lin. All Rights Reserved.