Section 5. Using the Control Palette

#5. Using the Control Palette

The context-sensitive Control palette provides comprehensive options for editing whatever is currently selecteda graphics frame, text frame, text, table cells, and more. In fact, if you keep the Control palette open, you are unlikely to need many of InDesign's other palettes and dialog boxes. If you're a QuarkXPress user, you'll immediately recognize the Control palette's similarities with the Measurements palette.

Since the Control palette is so useful, you'll want to keep it handy.

• When you first launch InDesign, the Control palette is docked at the top of the window. (A palette is "docked" when it snaps, or automatically aligns, with the edge of the window.)

• You can drag the Control palette to any location, including docking it to the bottom of the screen, by dragging its title bar (the vertical gray bar at the far left edge of the palette).

• Click the arrow at the right side of the Control palette to display a palette menu. At the bottom, you can choose Dock at Top, Dock at Bottom, or Float to position the palette.

• To open and close the Control palette, choose Window > Control.

The Control palette (Figures 5a5d) contains a variety of different panels that are specific to whatever you're editing. The panels switch automaticallyfor example, if you select a frame using the Selection tool, the Frame panel displays. The only time you have to make a choice is when you're formatting text: You can click the to display the Character panel or the to display the Paragraph panel.

Figure 5a. When text is selected, the Control palette displays either the Character or Paragraph panel. The Character panel lets you choose a font, size, leading, and other formats for highlighted characters.

Figure 5b. The Paragraph panel provides controls over alignment, indents, space between paragraphs, hyphenation, and more.

Figure 5c. When a text frame is selected, the Control palette lets you move it, resize it, rotate it, and change the number of columns.

Figure 5d. When a frame containing a graphic is selected, you can scale the graphic, automatically position it within the frame, and more.

As with the toolbox, point the mouse at any control on the Control palette to display its Tool Tip and find out what it does.

Quick Access to Even More Power

While the Control palette provides an impressive array of options, it doesn't do everything. For even more control over what you're editing, you can:

• Click the arrow at right to display the palette menu. For example, when the Paragraph panel is displayed, the palette menu provides Hyphenation, Justification, and Paragraph Rules commands.

• Option-click (Mac OS) or Ctrl-click (Windows) icons on the Control palette to open any associated dialog boxes. For example, clicking the Number of Columns icon on the Paragraph panel opens the Text Frame Options dialog box so you can edit anything to do with columns.

• Click the Toggle Palettes button at the far right of the Control palette. This will open related palettesfor example, when the Character panel is displayed, clicking this opens the Character palette and the Character Styles palette.