Switching from QuarkXPress

For the QuarkXPress veteran, the toughest thing about switching to InDesign is the set of tools. In your world, you've been using the Item tool (which you might call the pointer) and the Content tool (the little hand) for almost everything. Not only did you use them all the time, but the Item tool or Content tool was selected automatically for you most of the time (since object-creation tools snap back to the last-used selection tool). Over time, the two tools have evolved into almost one, so you might have been using the Content tool all the time, pressing z or Ctrl when you needed to manipulate an entire item.

You need to forget about this way of working entirely. In InDesign, you'll be switching tools constantly. When you create an object, its tool remains selected so you can't move or resize the objects immediately after creation. The Selection tool only lets you move and resize objects, while the Direct Selection tool lets you reshape objects and work with graphics.

The difference between the Selection tool and Direct Selection tool takes some getting used to for QuarkXPress users. In terms of working with content, the Direct Selection tool is much like QuarkXPress's Content tool, but it also lets you edit the frame as if it were a B ƒ zier object. For example, if the Direct Selection tool is selected and you drag a point on the frame, you'll move that point and thus change the shape of the object ‚ a rectangle would be converted into a polygon, since the lines immediately adjacent to the moved point will move with the point, while the rest of the frame will not be affected. In QuarkXPress, if the Content tool is selected and you drag a point on the frame, you'll resize the frame (perhaps nonproportionally) but the entire side(s) adjacent to the point will move with the point, so a rectangle would still be a rectangle. To change a frame in the way that QuarkXPress does with both the Content and Item tools, use the Selection tool in InDesign.

Think of the Type tool as a combination of the Rectangle Text Box tool and the Content tool for text. You must have the Type tool to work with text, but there's no moving or resizing of text frames while you're using it.

This will seem restrictive to you at first ‚ but the key is to embrace InDesign's single-letter shortcuts for selecting tools. (InDesign also provides QuarkXPress-like keyboard commands for temporarily activating tools, but it's easier to press a single letter to switch tools.)

As long as the Type tool isn't selected, you can activate any tool by pressing the letter displayed next to it in the tool's Tool Tip. In particular, you'll want to memorize the following:

• Press V for the Selection tool.

• Press A for the Direct Selection tool.

• Press T for the Type tool.

• Press H for the Hand tool (you can also press the spacebar; when editing text, you can press Option or Alt).

• Press Z for the Zoom tool (you can also press z +spacebar or Ctrl+spacebar then click the mouse to zoom in, and Option+ z +spacebar or Ctrl+Alt+spacebar then click the mouse to zoom out).

If you're also a Photoshop user, the single-letter shortcuts might be familiar to you, but it's an odd concept for a QuarkXPress-only user . Once you get the hang of it, however, you'll appreciate how fast and easy it is to switch tools.

A few overall interface differences between QuarkXPress and InDesign might hang you up initially. Keep in mind that many menu commands simply display a pane (which may already be open ) rather than showing a dialog box. Get used to deciphering icons or using tool tips on the panes because there are few dialog boxes containing named fields as you're used to in QuarkXPress's Character Attributes, Paragraph Attributes, and Modify dialog boxes. Contextual menus are implemented on a much broader scale than in QuarkXPress, so you can Control+click or right+click on objects, rulers, and more to make changes quickly.

InDesign CS also offers docking panes, whose tabs can be aligned to the screen edges so they're not in the way, as well as docked to the top of the screen like Microsoft Word's formatting palettes. You can drag these docked panes to your document to make them floating panes ƒ   la QuarkXPress. Note that InDesign's panes can be rearranged and combined into multipane palettes by dragging them on top of each other ‚ QuarkXPress's palettes are fixed and cannot be combined. Because InDesign has so many panes, it needs a way to manage them. Unlike QuarkXPress, InDesign lets you save these interface settings using its Workspaces feature (Window ‚ Workspace, whose submenu lets you select, create, and delete these workspaces).

InDesign uses all of QuarkXPress's measurement abbreviations, as well as its own. For example, InDesign accepts QuarkXPress's use of " to indicate inches, as well as InDesign's own standard of in and inch . Likewise, it accepts QuarkXPress's mm for millimeter as well as InDesign's own standard of m .

Tip ‚  

InDesign offers a set of keyboard commands similar to those in QuarkXPress (Edit ‚ Keyboard Shortcuts). I recommend that you avoid this set and learn the commands in InDesign. This will help you in communicating about InDesign and working with other Adobe software. If you do choose to use the QuarkXPress set of keyboard commands, see Chapter 3 for more information.