Datasheet

CHAPTER 1 Customizing

Application Bar

In an ongoing effort to get people to use the entry-level digital asset manager Adobe Bridge (and

through it buy stock photography and subscribe to Adobe RSS newsfeeds), Adobe has, since the

initial release of Bridge in Creative Suite (1), been integrating (some say inﬁltrating) all the major

applications like InDesign with commands and buttons to launch Bridge. InDesign CS3 brought

us a Control panel button named Go to Bridge, which also doubled as a menu to access the

short-lived Adobe Stock Photos. As a part of the Control panel, that Go to Bridge button/menu

could be easily hidden via the Customize Control Panel dialog box, which may be part of the

reason Adobe Stock Photos never succeeded and was killed by the time CS4 debuted.

Adobe Stock Photos- and Adobe RSS newsfeeds-free Bridge CS4 found its way into InDesign

CS4 not as a Control panel section that a user could hide but instead as a Browse in Bridge com-

mand on the File menu (which is obliterable via menu customizations) and as a nonremovable

Go to Bridge button on the new Application bar. It remains in both places in InDesign CS5; CS5

also includes the Mini Bridge panel, but that’s a topic for a different chapter.

On the Mac, the Application bar can be toggled on or off with a command at the bottom of

the Windows menu. Within the Application bar you’ll ﬁnd the application icon (the stylized ID

for InDesign); a Go to Bridge button; and alternate, menu-driven means of accessing document

zoom level, common show/hide commands from the View menu, preview modes, and work-

spaces. In addition, exclusive to the Application bar and available nowhere else in InDesign, the

Arrange Documents menu enables you to arrange multiple open documents’ windows in a diz-

zying variety of stacks, tiles, and ﬂotillas (see Figure 1.9). You’ll also ﬁnd a search ﬁeld to help

you ﬁnd topics in the InDesign help as well as a button to access the new CS Live online features

of Creative Suite 5.

Showing the Application bar on the Mac will cause the document zoom percentage display

to disappear from the status bar; hiding the Application bar puts the zoom percentage dis-

play back in the status bar.

The Application bar is very different on Windows. It contains all the same features as

the Mac version. A bigger difference, though, is that the Application bar can’t be hidden on

Windows. Whether you want them or not, Go to Bridge and the other menus and buttons are a

permanent ﬁxture in your copy of InDesign CS4 or CS5. There is a silver lining, though: Unlike

on a Mac, the Windows version of the Application bar is (usually) low proﬁle. It’s uniﬁed with

the application menus and minimize, maximize, and exit buttons to form a concatenated single

Application bar that takes up very little extra vertical space than that required by the menus.

Even the screen-wasting title bar is omitted!

Note that in some default workspaces on Windows, the Application bar appears as its own

toolbar independent of the menu bar and thus takes more vertical screen space. Despite the

obvious ability of the InDesign engineers to reposition the Application bar, there remains no

user interface for you and me to move or hide it.

Figure 1.9

The Application

bar on the Mac

(top) and Windows

(bottom)

650981c01.indd 12 11/1/10 10:21:47 AM