Datasheet
27
Chapter 1: Understanding InDesign Ingredients
Any active panel has a collapse control (the >> icon). For panels in the
dock, clicking that icon collapses it back into the dock. For panels not in
the dock (that is, for floating panels), collapsing them shrinks the panel
to a much smaller size to get them out of the way. When collapsed, these
panels will have a << icon to expand them again. (The Tools panel is an
exception: clicking the >> icon changes it to a two-column layout, while
clicking the << icon changes it to a one-column layout.)
Some panels have an expand/collapse control. Click the control to show
more or fewer options. (If all options are displayed, clicking the control
will shorten the panel and hide some of the advanced options; if only
the basic options are displayed, clicking the control lengthens the panel
and shows all the options.) Figure 1-4 shows examples of collapsed and
expanded panels.
Figure 1-4:
An example
of a panel
collapsed
(left) and
expanded
(right).
InDesign CS4 adds several new panels: Conditional Text (see Chapter 21),
Connections (a quick way to go to Adobe’s online resources), Kuler (see
Chapter 6), and Preflight (see Chapter 23). The Buttons panel replaces the
old States panel (see Chapter 24). Gone are the Command Bar and Navigator
panels.
To better suit your working style, you can drag panels by their tabs to move
them from one panel group to another, drag them out of a dock so that
they’re free-floating, or drag them into a dock so that they’re no longer free-
floating. The dock feature lets you keep panel groups in one contained area,
which helps keep the interface from getting too cluttered. But you’re not
forced to work this way: You can still drag panels outside the main dock so
that they’re free-floating on-screen.
Not all panels display in the main dock; less-used panels, such as Data Merge,
show up in a free-floating panel group when you open them via the Window
menu. Of course, you can always add such panels to the main dock if you use
them a lot.
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