Working with Palettes and Panes | Adobe InDesign CS3 Bible

Initially, software developers used floating palettes to provide convenient access to commonly used options such as colors, fonts, and style sheets. Palettes provide a more interactive method of working with features, because the screen is not obscured by a large dialog box and you can access the controls quickly. Eventually, palettes started to move away from serving as a convenient alternative to commands and became the primary method ‚ often the only method ‚ for performing many tasks .

Panes versus palettes

Using an approach pioneered by Photoshop, InDesign's palettes are often composed of multiple panes. Each pane has a tab (like a file folder does) that you click to switch to that pane. InDesign lets you drag panes from one palette to another, as well as to anywhere on-screen (creating a new palette with just the one pane). That makes the distinction between a palette and a pane somewhat artificial. In this book, I use palette to refer to the entity that holds one or more panes, or for entities like the Tools and Control palettes that are self-contained floating objects containing commands. I refer to panes as anything that can be made a pane, even if you might have made it into its own palette (for example, I still call the Transform pane the Transform pane, even if I move it into its own palette).

Almost every palette (whether it contains one pane or many panes) has a palette menu, which provides a pop-up menu of options specific to that pane. (It is much like a contextual menu.) The palette menu's options are specific to the current pane.

Note ‚

The word pane has another use in InDesign. A pane is also a specific area in a dialog box. Such multipane dialog boxes also have tabs (and in some cases, option lists) that let you switch among the panes. Having multiple panes in a dialog box lets Adobe fit more functionality into the same space on-screen.

There are so many panes in InDesign ‚ even more than in previous versions ‚ that you might want to consider hooking up a second monitor for displaying them. And break out the computer glasses and your decoder ring, because the panes are small and laden with mysterious icons.

As with the tools, if you make sure Show Tool Tips is checked in the General pane of the Preferences dialog box (choose InDesign ‚ Preferences on the Mac or Edit ‚ Preferences in Windows, or press z +K or Ctrl+K), you'll get some pretty good hints as to what the pane icons and fields do.

Managing palettes

Because there are so many panes in InDesign ‚ 22 standard palettes including the Tools palette (as shown in Figure 2-12) and not including any libraries or any of the 13 panes you might make into their own palettes ‚ you're not going to want them all open all the time. In fact, as Figure 2-12 shows, they palettes would fill an entire screen if they were all open. Therefore, you might have some palettes you leave open all the time, some you open only while formatting text, and some that you open and close for one-time uses. As you become familiar with the palettes, you'll discover which ones you want to keep open .

Figure 2-12: With all the palettes in InDesign open, working on a document is impossible .

Many palettes actually consist of multiple panes, such as the default combination of the Transform, Character, and Paragraph panes. You can create different combinations of panes to customize the palettes.

New Feature ‚

To try to gain some control over InDesign's palette profligacy, you can create workspaces, which are essentially memorized palette collections. Display the palettes you want, where you want them, and create a new workspace by choosing Window ‚ Workspace ‚ Save Workspace. Give it a name that makes sense, such as Text Palettes. That workspace is now available via Window ‚ Workspace ‚ [Workspace Name], automatically displaying just those saved palettes in their saved locations. By having several such workspaces, you can quickly switch among collections of palettes based on the tasks you're focused on.

Here's how panes work in InDesign:

To open a pane, choose its menu command (such as Window ‚ Color ). Some panes have keyboard shortcuts, as indicated in the menu. Opening a pane will open a palette, which might contain other panes.
To close a palette, click its Close box in the upper-left corner (Macintosh) or upper-right corner (Windows). This will close all the panes in the palette. (You can't close a pane that's part of a palette with other panes. To get rid of such a pane, you either close the palette and all its panes, or you drag the pane to its own palette and then close that new palette.)
To shrink a palette down to the names of the panes within it, click its Zoom box (Macintosh) or Minimize box (Windows).
To move a palette, drag its title bar.
To select a different pane in a palette, click its tab.
To combine the panes of different palettes, drag and drop a pane's tab into another palette.

To pull a pane out of a palette into its own, drag and drop its tab out of the palette into its own palette.

Note ‚

A few palettes contain arrows in the lower-right corner that you can drag to resize the palette, and some palette menus let you change the orientation of the palette from horizontal to vertical.

A few palettes also use a double-arrow character next to the pane name to indicate that there is more to the pane than may be displayed; click the pane title to expand or collapse those extra options.

New Feature ‚

You can collapse panes to tabs on the side of the screen and open them by clicking the pane's tab. (Figure 2-13 shows these side tabs in use.) To collapse a pane into a side tab, click on the palette's tab and drag it to the left or right side of your screen. To open the pane, click its tab. To collapse the pane, double-click its tab. To separate a pane from the screen edge, drag the tab out from the side of your screen or move it into a palette.

Figure 2-13: The new side-tabs feature lets you dock pane tabs at the side of the monitor window and click the tab names to open them when needed.

When you install InDesign, three palettes are placed along the right side of your screen by default; they contain the Pages, Layers, and Info panes; the Swatches, Character Styles, and Paragraph Styles panes; and the Stroke, Color, Transparency, and Gradient panes. If you open other panes, they will open as floating panes rather than be aligned to the side of the screen, but you can always move them to a screen edge if you prefer that placement.

Marrying and divorcing palette panes

Although it may seem as if combining and splitting panes is the antidote to InDesign's palette-itis, the resulting palettes can be difficult to work with. Combined panes can become cumbersome: If you combine panes that have different default sizes or orientations, each time you click a different pane the palette changes its size ‚ this can be fairly disorienting. Plus, you can't see and reach for different types of options as easily, because you have to activate different panes. On the other hand, splitting panes into too many separate palettes can leave you with an overwhelming number of palettes.

In general, you'll want to split palettes that you use often and combine or close panes that you use rarely. And you might change the palette configuration based on the type of document. If you're working on a movie poster, you'll definitely want the Navigator pane but might have little use for the Pages pane. Or if you're laying out a newsletter that is formatted exclusively with style sheets, you might as well close the Character and Paragraph panes.

Use the new workspaces feature to save different pane and palette configurations for different points in the workflow or for different kinds of documents.

Also use the new Control palette instead of panes, since it provides access to most common functions. Even better, the Control palette adjusts its display based on what the current object is, so you get just the relevant options. For example, when you select a text frame, the Control palette provides the most of functions of the Transform, Character Style, Character, Paragraph, Paragraph Styles, and Stroke panes.

Using panes

To use a pane, first you need to activate it. You can do this by clicking its tab (if the palette containing it is open) or by choosing its menu command in the Window menu (if the pane is not open or if another pane in that palette is active). You'll need to be on the lookout here ‚ if a menu command brings a pane forward in a palette, you might not even notice.

When a pane is active, controls in panes have the following characteristics:

Click a pop-up menu to display and select an option; the changes take effect immediately.
Highlight a value in a field to enter a new value. To implement the value, press Shift+Return or Shift+Enter. Or you can Tab to the next field or Shift+Tab to the previous field. Or just click in a different field or elsewhere in the document. To get out of a field you've modified, leaving the object unscathed, press Esc.
Some fields include up and down arrows that you can click to increase or decrease the value in the field.
Fields accept values in all different measurement systems. (I discuss this in detail in Chapter 3.)
In addition to entering values in fields, you can enter calculations. You can add to, subtract from, multiply, and divide values in fields using the following operators: +, ‚ , * (multiply), and / (divide). For example, to reduce the width of a frame by half, you might type /2 next to the current value of 4.5 inches in the Width field. Or, to increase the length of a line by 6 points, you can type +6 next to the current value in the Length field.

New Feature ‚
New to InDesign CS, you can also use percentages in fields, such as 50%, which adjusts the current value by that percentage.
Most panes provide a full menu that you can display by clicking the arrow in the upper-right corner. The palette menu provides commands related to the current pane's contents (for example, the Character Styles pane provides a command for creating a New Style, as shown in Figure 2-14).

Figure 2-14: Most panes include palette menus that provide access to related features.

Checking out the panes

Like the tools in InDesign, each pane has a distinct function. The use of each pane is covered in detail in the appropriate chapters throughout this book (for example, the Layers pane is covered in Chapter 6). But with the help of Tool Tips and a quick introduction to their primary purpose, you can start using many of the panes to start performing basic functions.

New Feature ‚

InDesign CS adds seven new panes. The most useful is the Control palette, which combines many attributes in one location. Other new panes include the Bookmarks, Flattener Preview, Info, Pathfinder, Separations Preview, and States panes.

Here is a quick summary of the InDesign panes (all available via the Window menu unless otherwise indicated). Note that in the figures of the various panes, the full pane is shown for any that have the option of showing just some options; these panes have a double-arrow to the right of the pane name.

Tools palette: As covered earlier in this chapter, this palette is the mechanism by which you select the appropriate tool to accomplish various layouts tasks.
Control palette (shortcut Option+ z +6 or Ctrl+Alt+6): This is one of the most useful features in InDesign. It combines many attributes about the currently selected object so you can minimize the use of other panes and menu items. The palette changes based on what is selected, as Figure 2-15 shows.

Figure 2-15: The Control palette for frames with pictures (top), frames with text (middle), and frames with lines (bottom).

QuarkXPress User ‚
The Control palette by default is docked to the top of the screen. QuarkXPress users might want to float it at the bottom to mimic QuarkXPress's interface
Links pane (shortcut Shift+ z +D or Ctrl+Shift+D): The Links pane shows the original location of imported graphics and text files (see Figure 2-16).

Figure 2-16: The Links pane.
Character pane (choose Window ‚ Type & Tables ‚ Character, or press z +T or Ctrl+T): Use this pane (shown in Figure 2-17) to change common attributes of highlighted text such as the font, size, leading, kerning, tracking, and scaling.

Figure 2-17: The Character pane (left) and the Paragraph pane (right).
Paragraph pane (choose Window ‚ Type & Tables ‚ Paragraph, or press Option+ z +T or Ctrl+Option+T): Use this pane (shown in Figure 2-17) to change common attributes of selected paragraphs such as the alignment, indents, space before and after, and hyphenation.
Character Styles pane (choose Window ‚ Type & Tables ‚ Character Styles, or press Shift+F11): Use this pane (shown in Figure 2-18) to create and apply style sheets consisting of character-level formats.

Figure 2-18: The Character Styles pane (left) and the Paragraph Styles pane (right).
Paragraph Styles pane (choose Window ‚ Type & Tables ‚ Paragraph Styles, or press F11): Use this pane (shown in Figure 2-18) to create and apply style sheets consisting of paragraph-level formats.
Tabs pane (choose Window ‚ Type & Tables ‚ Tabs, or press Shift+ z +T or Ctrl+Shift+T): This pane (shown in Figure 2-19) lets you create tab stops for selected paragraphs; you can also specify alignment, position, and leader characters for the tabs.

Figure 2-19: The Tabs pane (left) and the Story pane (right).
Story pane (choose Window ‚ Type & Tables ‚ Story): It's small but important ‚ the Story pane (shown in Figure 2-19) lets you specify hanging punctuation for all the frames in a story by checking Optical Margin Alignment. You can also change the type size if the need arises.

Glyphs pane (choose Window ‚ Type & Tables ‚ Glyphs): The Glyphs pane lets you access special characters within a font. Figure 2-20 shows the Glyphs pane.

Figure 2-20: The Glyphs pane.

Tip ‚

Several of the text-oriented panes are available from the Type menu: Character, Paragraph, Tabs, Glyphs, Story, Character Styles, and Paragraph Styles. This provides faster access than accessing them through the Window ‚ Type & Tables submenu.

Text Wrap pane (choose Window ‚ Type & Tables ‚ Text Wrap or press Option+ z +W or Ctrl+Alt+W): The Text Wrap pane (shown in Figure 2-21) provides intuitive buttons for controlling how text runs around selected objects.

Figure 2-21: The Text Wrap pane (left), the Transform pane (center), and the Align pane (right).
Transform pane (shortcut F9): This pane (shown in Figure 2-21) lets you specify size, placement, scale, rotation, and shear of selected objects with the Transform pane.
Align pane (shortcut F8): The Align pane (shown in Figure 2-21) provides buttons that let you evenly distribute or realign multiple-selected objects with one click.
Pages pane (shortcut F12): Use this pane (shown in Figure 2-22) to create master pages and to add, rearrange, and delete document pages. You can also create sections of page numbers using the Pages pane's palette menu.

Figure 2-22: The Pages pane (left), the Layers pane (center), and the Navigator pane (right).
Layers pane (shortcut F7): The Layers pane (shown in Figure 2-22) provides access to vertical slices of a document that you can use to control the stacking order of objects, to isolate specific portions of a design, or to store revisions of the same document.
Navigator pane: The Navigator pane (shown in Figure 2-22) shows a color proxy version of pages and lets you isolate a portion of any page to display in the document window.
Swatches pane (shortcut F5): The Swatches pane (shown in Figure 2-23) lets you create named colors such as those using Pantone, Focoltone, and Toyo inks, and apply the colors to text, strokes, and fills.

Figure 2-23: Clockwise from upper left: The Swatches, Stroke, Color, Attributes, and Gradient panes.
Stroke pane (shortcut F10): Use the Stroke pane (shown in Figure 2-23) to outline the edges of frames and lines; you have control over the thickness and the pattern of the outlines.
Color pane (shortcut F6): The Color pane (shown in Figure 2-23) lets you create LAB, CMYK, and RGB colors, and apply the colors to text, strokes, and fills. (LAB, CMYK, and RGB are all composite color models, in which all colors are made by mixing a small number of primary colors. Chapters 8 and 42 describe these models in detail.)
Gradient pane: Use the Gradient pane (shown in Figure 2-23) to create a stroke or fill consisting of a graduated blend between two colors.
Attributes pane: The Attributes pane (shown in Figure 2-23) lets you specify that the stroke or fill in selected objects overprints the background.
Table pane: The Table pane (shown in Figure 2-24) lets you adjust table settings.

Figure 2-24: The Table pane (left) and the Index pane (right).
Index pane: The Index pane (shown in Figure 2-24) lets you add and manage index and table-of-contents entries.
Scripts pane: The Scripts pane (shown in Figure 2-25) shows available AppleScripts, Visual Basic scripts, and Java scripts in the Scripts folder in the InDesign folder.

Figure 2-25: The Scripts pane (left) and the Script Label pane (right).
Script Label pane: The Script Label pane (shown in Figure 2-25) lets you change the label of the selected script.
Pathfinder pane: This new pane (shown in Figure 2-26) lets you manipulate paths, such as combining, separating, and otherwise working with open and closed paths.

Figure 2-26: The Pathfinder pane.
Transparency pane: The Transparency pane (shown in Figure 2-27) lets you adjust the solidity of images to create fading and overlap effects.

Figure 2-27: The Transparency pane (left) and the Flattener Preview pane (right).
Flattener Preview pane: This new pane (shown in Figure 2-27) lets you see what page items (typically those with transparency) are flattened (made solid) during printing or exporting to Encapsulated PostScript (EPS), Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG, an Adobe vector format for the Web), or Portable Document Format (PDF) 1.3 formats. Flattening occurs for printing devices and graphics export formats that don't support transparency.
Separations Preview pane: This new pane (shown in Figure 2-28) lets you see page items with various color plates enabled, as well as preview the effects of different ink densities .

Figure 2-28: The Separations Preview pane (left) and the Trap Presets pane (right).
Trap Presets pane: The Trap Presets pane (shown in Figure 2-28) lets you set and apply different trapping settings to objects, which controls how abutting and overlapping objects print to avoid gaps caused by paper-feed variations during printing.
Info pane: This new pane (shown in Figure 2-29) shows some of the characteristics ‚ such as size, position, and cropping ‚ of selected objects.

Figure 2-29: The Info pane.
States pane: This new pane shown in Figure 2-30) sets button actions for both Web pages and PDF files.

Figure 2-30: Clockwise from upper left: The States, Tags, Bookmarks, and Hyperlinks panes.
Tags pane: The Tags pane (shown in Figure 2-30) lets you add XML tags and map them to paragraph and character styles. XML tags determine the formatting for XML data sources used in XML documents.
Bookmarks pane: This new pane (shown in Figure 2-30) creates the bookmarks used in PDF files to create clickable indexes and tables of contents.
Hyperlinks pane: The Hyperlinks pane (shown in Figure 2-30) lets you set up hyperlinks from and to document objects and pages, as well as to World Wide Web locations.