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QuarkXPress 8: A Suite Response

COLOR ME SURPRISED

The color is all new, but designed to be monitor friendly. The softer hues look great on an LCD or a cinema display. They weren't intended to be shocking, but they certainly make you sit up and take a closer look.

Like with many of the new features, you have options — even with something as minor as the pasteboard. Impose your color preferences onto your desktop-publishing environment by checking out the new preferences for the pasteboard. Choose QUARKXPRESS > PREFERENCES > DISPLAY to modify the three options: the color of the pasteboard surrounding all pages, the color of the pasteboard of the active page, and the size of the pasteboard.

Figure 3 Here you can see that I have modified the pasteboard areas so that I can more easily identify the active spread on which I am working.

You are here

How many times have you copied and pasted an item and then couldn't find the item, only to later locate it on a neighboring page? Or worse, copied and pasted several times, thinking that something was amiss with your copy or paste keys? Again, later finding the item pasted numerous times on a neighboring page. This has happened to me dozens of times, and it's because I might have the smallest sliver of page six showing at the top of my screen and thinking that I'm viewing page seven (after all, it IS the page at which I'm looking), I paste the object. There's not enough of page six showing that I realize my error, but there's enough there that QuarkXPress — wrongly — assumes that's my current page.

QuarkXPress 8 now more intelligently determines what page is actually the active page in a project window. Additionally, as you read at the beginning of the article, QuarkXPress 8 uses distinct pasteboard colors to identify active and inactive pages or spreads (assign these through the preferences dialogue). A single click and you can make a page active — you don't have to center it in your active window, click on an item, or make sure that some tiny bit of another page is not showing. As you scroll through a document (not during panning), QuarkXPress 8 will continually update its guess at the current page/spread. Generally speaking it will be the page/spread that is in the center of the view, but you can always change the active page by clicking anywhere in the layout of the page you wish to make active.

Note: In addition to pasteboard colors, the guide and grid lines of an active page are darker than those of inactive pages.

If you have doubt about the page number, check the page-number field in the lower-left corner of the active window. That number will always be the ultimate authority, and it's interactive, so you can use it to change what page you are on, as well.

CLEANING WINDOWS

While we're on the topic of a new look, how about that new project window? There are a number of enhancements in the window that frames your project. These little additions all add up and as you complete a project in this new environment, you'll find time savings in the sheer convenience of it all.

For instance, the names of your layout spaces are now listed at the top of the active window. I personally like this one a lot. My experience with QuarkXPress 6.5 and 7 users is that they really haven't delved into the layout space concept much — with the layout space names at the bottom of the window, they seemed positioned to be overlooked. I cannot tell you how many times I've pointed these out to a seasoned user and have them say, "Where did those come from?" So, while it's a small thing, I think it will have a big impact. If you're still in the dark, check out figure 4 and then go to our article on Layout Spaces and prepare to be wowed.

Figure 4 Moving the layout space names to the top of the window makes them more prominent and easier to use for navigation.

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