Comments on: Living Peacefully Without the Navigator Panel

By: BGM

BGM — Sat, 12 May 2012 01:11:27 +0000

Folks, I wrote a little javascriptlet for InDesign to mimic the Navigator Panel. The original idea wasn’t mine (I give details in the help file included), but this works very well in my CS4.
Here is the link to the download (no executables – just a script – put it in your scripts startup folder):
http://www.sspxusa.org/goodies/InDesignNavigationPanel.zip

I really missed the Navigator Panel. Now I am somewhat happy.

By: Pam

Pam — Fri, 11 May 2012 03:27:28 +0000

I MISS MY NAVIGATOR PANEL!!!!! I just went from CS3 to CS 5.5 and I’m completely lost as how to navigate. It’s like going back to Quark 4. For those people who never used it, fine, don’t use it, but PLEASE BRING IT BACK. I read all this scrolling and hand use to navigate. HOW CAN THIS BE BETTER? It certainly isn’t more efficient. I try to keep my hands off the keyboard as much as possible. I use an old Intuos 2 Wacom tablet, because it give me more function keys. I DON’T USE A MOUSE, I don’t have a scroll wheel, and I don’t want one. I have carpal tunnel, I don’t need ANY extra keystrokes. For those of you who rejected the navigator early on and never open the panel again, you missed out on a lot, and a VERY EASY and efficient way to NAVIGATE a layout, especially a large layout.

By: Bill Simpson

Bill Simpson — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 17:12:00 +0000

My favorite way to zoom in to small objects is to first select them and then press Cmd-Opt-= (Fit Selection in Window). That brings them up to a size appropriate for your screen and the object.

By: brother.gabriel

brother.gabriel — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 22:40:18 +0000

At least Adobe could allow us the use of the navigator window via an addon! I too am not patient enough to wait for powerzoom, and I don’t much like holding down one mouse button and scrolling the wheel at the same time (too much hand-brain coordination). I really miss the navigator panel. I used it all the time in all of CS3 – it was a mainstay. Alas!

By: Twizzlewit

Twizzlewit — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 15:20:51 +0000

It’s like someone cut off a finger and it really is taking me forever to figure out how to get along without it. Bring back navigator … PLEASE

By: sirsanio

sirsanio — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 13:43:28 +0000

@Stan-I very much agree with you.
I think the Navigator panel was easier and faster to use. I understand that it might take the same second to go to the panel and zoom in/out but keeping pressure on the mouse button to activate the zoom tool and then, at the same time use the scroll wheel while being confined to preset window sizes is cumbersome and annoying. Apart from that in the navigator panel i knew where i was while zoomed in. Especially good when you have more than one monitor. Come on ADOBE, does it really make the program that much bigger to keep the Nav-Panel? Bring it back!!!

By: PeterW

PeterW — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 03:32:47 +0000

Have to admit i’m having some real issues with the power zoom. I’m using it on my laptop and all i want to do is pan around the document page using the spacebar to access the hand tool and instead i’m being zoomed out . Its become extremely irritating. Is there any way to disable it?

By: Stan

Stan — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 21:16:23 +0000

I don’t see a way of adjusting the power zoom options – no sign of these in preferences: how far out it zooms (timing options would be nice too). It never zooms out far enough for my liking: I’d like it to default-frame to the entire page (as per Ctrl + 0) so I could go anywhere on the given page for the current zoom level. It only seems to frame roughly to-width – which isn’t very helpful if making a vertical banner, for example, which is what I’m currently working on. You can fiddle with it and get it to zoom farther out, but then after zooming in again, you’re back to the enforced default.

I just begain working in CS4, formerly was in CS2. I don’t see why I am not permitted the option to continue using the navigator panel. I used it all the time, had it always-up. Found it intuitive, convenient. Also used it at times to navigate multiple pages. What a pain. Yes, of course I’m aware of other navigation methods, but for me the navigator panel was the most convenient: visual, like a map, and immediately responsive.

“if you really miss it, you can always open Illustrator or Photoshop”: right, as if anyone’s going to be doing document layout in those apps.

By: Roland

Roland — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 06:44:55 +0000

I mainly use the power zoom feature to find a page I’m looking for. The pages panel takes too long to update and I don’t want to increase the thumbnails’ size (if it’s even possible to make them large enough to roughly see pages’ contents) so it’s a quick way to navigate catalogs and such. Other than that I find myself still using Ctrl + and Ctrl – mostly because it takes a while before power zoom kicks in and I’m pretty impatient that way

By: Thies de Waard

Thies de Waard — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 07:04:45 +0000

The power zoom is an addition (not a replacement) to the regular zoom funcionality (dragging a box), and is great when having to closely examine small details at various places in your document. For example, if you want ot make sure you lines/strokes are centered on the guides everywhere, in the old situation you would spent a long time zooming in and out by hand. Now with powerzoom it is a múch faster job! So the powerzoom is a lot more than just a replacement of the old navigation window (which I never used).