W orking in CorelDRAW X5, you’ll find yourself using an assortment of interface elements that offer control over everything you do. Many areas make up the interface because the program offers an abundance of creative tools that you can use to create compelling graphics and documents. Certain areas of the interface such as the property bar are context sensitive: your available options change as you choose different toolbox tools. Other interface areas, like the toolbox, are always visible in the workspace. And then there are dockers, which are displayed only if you specifically open them. Exactly which—and where— elements appear in the program interface is not a set piece; you have ultimate flexibility and customization control so you can personalize CorelDRAW. You can choose a predesigned workspace—CorelDRAW’s default—or you can add, remove, and rearrange options to suit your work needs and even make the interface look like Adobe Illustrator. The important thing is that you should feel at home working in CorelDRAW; this chapter shows you where everything is, and how you can make it suit your work style. The CorelDRAW X5 Workspace CorelDRAW X5 has been carefully revamped from previous versions to make it easier for you to find and work with the tools you need to use, when you need to use them. CorelDRAW workspace elements can be divided into two categories: ● Global and program control elements, such as measurement scales, backup files, and memory use ● Design or complete document features, such as guidelines, styles, and nudge distances If you’re new to CorelDRAW or just new to this version, you will want to take a look at the roadmap to follow, and get a handle on CorelDRAW’s interface. CorelDRAW X5’s Application Window The application window is mainly what you see when CorelDRAW X5 is open. It is the stage that surrounds and contains the drawing windows. Drawing windows (sometimes called document windows) contain the drawing page or pages that hold the graphics and other content you create. Even if no drawing windows are open, the application window provides access to certain command menus, toolbars, the toolbox, dockers, status bar, and the Color Palette. Figure 2-1 identifies the application window parts. You can have more than one drawing window (sometimes called a document window in other applications) open in the application window, but only one can be active at a time. The specific settings you see displayed on the toolbar, property bar, dockers, and other application window interface elements are those that are assigned to the currently active drawing window. They change if you make another drawing window active by clicking the desired drawing window. 24 CorelDRAW X5 The Official Guide As in all standard Windows applications, clicking the Close button at the top right side of the application window’s title bar closes CorelDRAW X5. Clicking the Minimize button shows or hides CorelDRAW X5, and clicking the Maximize/Restore button quickly changes the size of the application window itself. Clicking a drawing window’s Close button closes the drawing window, removing it from the application window, while clicking a drawing window’s Minimize or Maximize/Restore button minimizes it to a document title bar near the bottom of the application window or restores it to size within the application window. With CorelDRAW open and all documents closed, you can still perform many necessary tasks. You can use File commands and open suite applications such as Corel CAPTURE, Corel BARCODE WIZARD, Corel PHOTO-PAINT, and even another copy of CorelDRAW with the Application Launcher. You can also use some of Corel’s tool managers, work with macros, view help topics, and access Corel’s online web resources through the Welcome screen. CHAPTER 2: Exploring Your Workspace 25 2 FIGURE 2-1 CorelDRAW X5’s application window features these interface areas. Program title bar Minimize Maximize/ Restore Close Menu bar Toolbar Property bar Toolbox Status bar Minimized drawing window Document title bar Color palette Docker Ill 2-1 The Application Launcher on the application window’s toolbar allows you to open another, unique copy of CorelDRAW, but simply because you can doesn’t mean you should. Depending on how your memory preferences are set up in Tools | Options | Workspace | Memory, you could potentially throttle your computer’s system RAM and lose valuable work; the only reason you’d do this would be to copy objects between documents. You can achieve the same result much more simply and with less chance of a system halt by copying and moving objects between drawing windows in a single session of CorelDRAW. Drawing Windows When a drawing window is fully maximized, it fills the dark gray space in the center of the application window and looks as if it is part of the application window. When a drawing window is open but not fully maximized, it is easy to see that it’s a separate window element with its own interface elements that are unique to that drawing window. Unlike the menu bar, property bar, toolbar, toolbox, Color Palette, and dockers, a drawing window cannot be dragged outside of the application window and onto the desktop or onto a second monitor’s desktop. Not surprisingly, the interface elements that are contained within a drawing window report on or control that specific drawing window. Like the application window, a drawing window also has standard window controls such as a title bar that identifies the document’s file path and name, as well as Minimize, Maximize/Restore, and Close buttons. Drawing windows also have page borders, which (as with other windows) can be dragged to change the size of the window. They also have scroll bars that are used to change your view of the document’s contents. Interface elements special to drawing windows include rulers; the document navigator, which is used to add, delete, and move between pages in a multi-page drawing window (see Chapter 6); the drawing page, which contains what can be printed; and the Navigator button, which helps you move around a drawing without having to zoom out. CorelDRAW X5 is compliant with the Microsoft Windows standard for multiple document interfaces, meaning you can have more than one document (drawing) window open at a time. To switch between drawing windows, choose Window | document name (where document name is the actual name of your CorelDRAW X4 document). In Figure 2-2, you can see a 26 CorelDRAW X5 The Official Guide basic and very useful drawing window technique: Suppose you have an object in one document window and want a copy of it in a different one. You choose Window | Tile Vertically (you can do this manually if you’re skilled manipulating windows in Windows), and then move the object by just dragging it into the other window using the Pick tool. To copy the object, hold the modifier key CTRL as you drag from one window to the other. CHAPTER 2: Exploring Your Workspace 27 2 Parent and Child Window Buttons A document’s Minimize, Maximize/Restore, and Close buttons are not located in the drawing window frame when a drawing window is maximized in the application window. The Minimize, Maximize/Restore, and Close buttons for the current drawing window are grayscale, smaller in size, and placed just below the Minimize, Maximize/ Restore, and Close buttons that belong to the application window. If you want to close a document window, but your attention is wandering a bit and you are running on autopilot, it’s easy to make a mistake and click the larger, more colorful Close button that belongs to the entire CorelDRAW application. So save your work often and try to remember that the big, red button is for the whole application and the smaller one is for the document at hand. FIGURE 2-2 Working between drawing windows is accomplished by click-dragging using the Pick tool. Hold CTRL and click-drag to copy. CorelDRAW uses a default naming system of Untitled-1, Untitled-2, and so on, incrementing the number for each new document you open in the current CorelDRAW session. You are given the chance (and you should take it) to give your drawing a more meaningful name when you save the document by choosing File | Save or pressing CTRL+S. You can also open more than one document window showing the same document, enabling you to work on one document in multiple windows. This is a particularly useful feature when you need to zoom in close to work on a small area of a graphic, but you also need to be able to see how your work on that area affects the whole composition. Both windows are “live,” so you can edit in either of them, and all the changes you make editing in one window will also appear in the other window, because these windows represent different views of the same document, not two independent files that can be saved as different versions. To open another view of the active drawing window, choose Window | New Window. To make one of the open views the active window, you can click that window, or you can also use Window | document name:N (where N is the automatically applied view number). Open as many windows as you need—this feature is limited only by your available system resources. Ill 2-2 28 CorelDRAW X5 The Official Guide Multiple views of same document Specifying Toolbar and Dialog Values Many times when working in CorelDRAW, you need to enter measurements or numeric values, choose options and states, and control the behavior of interface elements on toolbars, in dialogs, and so on. CorelDRAW uses a wide variety of standard input fields and controls to make it easy for you to enter or tweak the specific kind of data you need. This section guides you through the ways data can be entered and alerts you to some of the extra power and usability Corel engineers have given these interface elements. ● Num boxes To specify values, you’ll find num boxes—short for numeric boxes. Usually a value already is in the box, such as the page width in the following illustration. Just highlight the existing value using a click-drag action, and then type a new value. Alternatively, you can double-click to select the entire value in the num box before typing the value you want. If you insert the cursor at any point in the existing value, you can use your keyboard arrow keys to move within the value and then backspace to remove the number entry, then adding the value you need. Finally, you need to confirm the value you entered by pressing… ENTER. Press TAB to quickly move your cursor from one num box to the next in the group, or press SHIFT+TAB to move to the previous box. In dialogs, clicking the Apply button applies the new options and leaves the dialog open; clicking OK closes the dialog and applies the new values or options. On toolbars, pressing ENTER after typing the value does the same thing, as shown here. Ill 2-3 CHAPTER 2: Exploring Your Workspace 29 2 Highlight the existing value; then type in the value you need. Here’s an unexpected convenience: you can perform calculations in num boxes using simple math equations to arrive at a value you need. Type symbols between values to create the equation sequences. Use your plus (+) and minus ( ) keys for adding and subtracting, and your asterisk (*) and forward slash (/) keys for multiplying and dividing. Pressing ENTER performs the calculation. Naturally, you can’t enter invalid keystrokes in a value box, such as alphabet letters—you’ll just get a system beep after pressing ENTER, and the previous, proper numerical value will reappear. ● Combo boxes Combo (short for combination) is a num box with a clickable selection button for access to preset values. You can enter a specific value into a combo box either by typing, or by choosing a preset value from the selector. Toolbar and docker combo boxes often require pressing ENTER to apply the new value you type in, while clicking Apply or OK in dialogs does the same thing. Ill 2-4 ● Flyout option menus On certain toolbars and dockers, you’re going to find flyout menus, which are often accessed by clicking a button that has a small, triangular- shaped, flyout arrow pointing to the right. For example, you can spot a tool on the toolbox that has extended options you access from the tool button by a tick mark on the button’s lower right. Flyouts often contain ways to change behavior states, apply commands, and access options. Some apply options immediately, while others require that they be closed first using the small X symbol usually found at the upper- right corner. Examples of each are shown in the following: 30 CorelDRAW X5 The Official Guide Enter value or click button to select preset value. Ill 2-5 ● Color selectors Color selectors often appear in dialogs or toolbars as a clickable button that has the secondary function of displaying the currently selected color, as shown here. Clicking opens a selector to display the current color palette and requires you to click once to specify a color. Most color selectors also include the Other button, which is a shortcut to color models, mixers, and palettes (covered in Chapter 17). Ill 2-6 ● List selectors List selectors differ from combo boxes in that you cannot enter a value, but instead pick from a predefined list of values or graphic samples that show the way that a style or arrow (or similar) will be applied or created, as shown on the next page. Clicking one of the entries in the list chooses and applies a value, size, state, mode, or style to the currently selected object. These lists are occasionally called drop-down lists in other applications and pull-down lists in Apple’s OS X. CHAPTER 2: Exploring Your Workspace 31 2 Flyout arrow Flyout menu Tick mark indicates popout menu. Popout menus Click to access a complete set of color mixers and digital color models. Ill 2-7 ● Radio buttons and option boxes These two interface devices are slightly different, not just in shape, but also in the choices they offer, as shown next. Radio buttons are round, come in groups, and only allow you to select one of the options in the group at a time. Option boxes are square and let you choose an option or state to be either on (with a check mark) or off (without a check mark). You’ll find in many areas of the Options pages that you can choose more than one option (more than one box can be checked) at a time. Ill 2-8 ● Buttons Buttons appear throughout CorelDRAW and can do one of several things. Command buttons perform commands instantaneously, but toggle buttons control (and indicate) a specific feature’s On and Off states, using a pressed or not pressed appearance. Generally, a pressed state indicates On, while the not pressed state indicates Off. Shortcut buttons open dialogs to further options, while selector buttons open lists of preset selections. 32 CorelDRAW X5 The Official Guide Click to access preset values. Click to activate the option. Click to choose between options. Ill 2-9 ● Spinners Spinners (also known as spin boxes) are similar to combo boxes, in that they can be used to specify values by typing or by using mouse actions. Single clicks on the up and down arrow buttons increase or decrease the values incrementally, but you can also click-drag on the divider between the two arrow buttons—up to increase or down to decrease the value. Ill 2-10 ● Sliders You use sliders to specify values within a given range—often between 0 and 100 and often based on percent—by entering values, or by dragging a control slider, which is intuitive and provides the anticipated results. To manipulate a slider value, use a click-drag action to move the slider either right (to increase) or left (to decrease), as shown here on the property bar after the Interactive transparency tool has been used. Ill 2-11 ● Pop-up menus To access pop-up menu commands and options, click your right mouse button (instead of the typical left-click) on any given point. The pop-up menu appears at the tip of your cursor (as shown on the next page) and closes automatically after a selection is made or by clicking elsewhere in the interface. Pop-up menus are sometimes called contextual menus, and a right-facing arrow next to a pop-up menu item indicates that there’s a submenu with still more options, usually relating to the main menu option. CHAPTER 2: Exploring Your Workspace 33 2 On (active) Off (inactive) Highlight existing value; then type value in the box. Click to increase/decrease. Click-drag to increase/decrease. Enter value. Click-drag to increase/decrease. . while others require that they be closed first using the small X symbol usually found at the upper- right corner. Examples of each are shown in the following: 30 CorelDRAW X5 The Official Guide Enter. applications, clicking the Close button at the top right side of the application window’s title bar closes CorelDRAW X5. Clicking the Minimize button shows or hides CorelDRAW X5, and clicking the Maximize/Restore. Windows), and then move the object by just dragging it into the other window using the Pick tool. To copy the object, hold the modifier key CTRL as you drag from one window to the other. CHAPTER