Datasheet

Panels
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7
Many panels—the Pages and Swatches panels, for instance—are resizable. Within a stack,
they can be resized by hovering the cursor along their bottom edge, at the point where they join
the next panel down, and dragging up or down. The cursor will become a double-headed arrow
as a visual cue.
Multistate Panels
Many panels have expanded views with additional options, controls, or fields hidden by default.
Switch between the compact and expanded views by choosing Show Options or Hide Options
from the panel flyout menus. As we deal with each panel’s expanded controls throughout the
rest of the book, I’ll usually remind you to show the expanded view. However, since this book is
written as a focused manual for using InDesign in professional print design and production work-
flows rather than as a soup-to-nuts InDesign CS5 reference book, some panels won’t even be men-
tioned in later chapters. Always check for the Show Options command on a panel’s flyout menu.
Another way to discern if a given panel has multiple states is the presence of double (stacked)
arrows in the title tab (see Figure 1.4). Clicking the arrows cycles through the states of any
palette—condensed, expanded, and minimized. Double-clicking the title tab of the panel itself
accomplishes the same state cycling as clicking the arrows.
The Tools Panel
You’ll use the Tools panel more than any other. All your tools are there, as are basic fill and
stroke color controls and preview modes. In Figure 1.5, I’ve identified each of the tool icons and
different parts in an exploded view of the Tools panel.
Customization options for the Tools panel are limited to two choices:
Whether it’s docked or free floating
•u
How its tools are arranged—in the now-standard single-column array, as a single row, or in •u
the nostalgic two-column format (see Figure 1.6)
The first option, docked or floating, is set in the same manner as any other panel—drag it
toward or away from the screen edge. When docked, it uses the entire screen’s worth of vertical
space because other panels cannot be docked beneath or above the Tools panel. That’s the con.
The pro, of course, is that, when the Tools panel is docked, document windows automatically
resize around it, never over- or underlapping it as they would do in versions of InDesign prior to
the introduction of docking in InDesign CS3.
Figure 1.4
A multistate panel,
the Gradient panel,
shows a double arrow
in its title tab. (Left)
The condensed state.
(Right) The expanded
or options state.
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