*** From the Archives ***
This article is from May 12, 2010, and is no longer current.
Fine craftsmanship in InDesign
I’m at 30,000 feet winging my way to the InDesignSecrets Print and ePublishing Conference at the Adobe campus in Seattle. While there, I’ll be giving a hearty ‘thank you’ to the InDesign development team for all of their hard work.
In each version, the fine craftsmen (and women) at Adobe continue to ‘sand off the rough edges’ and make InDesign smoother, easier and more efficient to use. What prompted me to write this today was the discovery that additional buttons in the CS5 Control Panel are option/alt-clickable. Since at least CS3 you’ve been able to option-click (Mac) or alt-click (Windows) on many of the Control Panel buttons and icons as an alternate way to bring up certain dialog boxes. For example, you can option/alt-click on the drop cap icon to access the Drop Caps and Nested Styles dialog box. Or option/alt-click on the numbered or bulleted list icons to reveal the Bullets and Numbering dialog box.
In CS5, if you option-click on any of the Text Wrap icons, the Text Wrap panel appears on the screen. I don’t use Text Wrap often enough to warrant the panel taking up screen space, so this is a fantastic way to display this panel on an as-needed basis. Sweet!
Also new in CS5:
- Option/alt-click on the Drop shadow icon to display the Effects panel.
- Option/alt-click on the Corner Options icon to display the Corner Options dialog.
- Option/alt-click on the Span Columns icon to display the Span Columns dialog.
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Great post Keith. Here’s another one new to CS5:
Option/Alt-Click on any of the Frame Fitting buttons to open the Frame Fitting Options dialog. Especially useful to fine tune the settings for the new Auto-Fit feature.
Slight tangent… if you Shift-Click on either of the new Swatches widgets in the Control panel, they will display the Color panel in the drop-down instead of Swatches.
Nice features…but can CS5 save the dimensions of an object when made into an Object style?
No it can’t. But if you make an object style and you like it that size then you can
Option 1: File>New Library and insert it into a library, when you drag and drop from the Library it will retain it’s size and object style.
Option 2: Select the object and use File>Export and choose InDesign Snippet. This too will retain the object size and object style. You can then drag and drop that from your Explorer or Finder window or use File>Place to insert the snippet.
I have used very much (since CS3) Option/Alt Clicks with rotate and flip buttons in Control Panel. Instead of rotating or flipping selected object itself, you take a copy of it, and do your thing to that copy….