Did you know we offer Dreamweaver MX training for both Windows and Macintosh platforms? Check out our training schedule.
Index of Topics
When you install Dreamweaver MX on Windows, you are asked if you want the Dreamweaver 4 or Dreamweaver MX workspace. If you later change your mind as to which workspace you want to use, choose Edit > Preferences and in the General category click the Change Workspace button. Select the workspace you want and then click OK. You will then need to quit and restart Dreamweaver to use the new workspace.
When using Dreamweaver MX in Windows, maximize your document windows when you have multiple pages open. Dreamweaver then displays a page tab at the bottom of the Document window. You can click a page tab to quickly switch to that page.
Dreamweaver (Windows) uses your system settings when displaying file names in the title bar. If you have the option selected to hide file extensions for known file types, then Dreamweaver doesn't display the extension (for example .htm) in the document title bar or in the page tab (see above tip) if you have your document page maximized. To change the setting, select your local disk and then choose Folder Options from the View menu (or the Tools menu in Win XP). Select the View tab, and deselect the option to hide file extensions.
In Dreamweaver MX, there is an integrated file browser within the Site panel that allows you to view local disks or network drives. You can use the file browser just as you would use Windows Explorer or the Macintosh Finder to add folders, move files, or rename folders or files. In Windows, the file browser is named Desktop within the Site panel. On the Macintosh, the file browser is named Computer.
When defining your site, select the default folder for your images in the Site Definition dialog box. You can drag an image to a page from anywhere on your desktop (using the integrated file browser) and Dreamweaver makes a copy and places it in the default images folder.
If you need to edit your site, you can quickly open the Site Defintion dialog box by double-clicking the site name from the Site pop-up menu in the Site panel.
To refresh the Assets panel's Site list, click the Refresh Site List button (looks like a circular arrow) in the Assets panel. This action refreshes any images or other assets you may have added to your site. This action doesn't reflect any changes to the site that you may have made outside of Dreamweaver. To rebuild the site cache and the Site list to show changes made outside of Dreamweaver, Ctrl-click (Windows) or Command-click (Macintosh) the Refresh Site List button.
Create a folder within your site to store the source files such as the FLA files for your Flash movies, or the PNG files frrom your Fireworks graphics. Select that folder and then right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Macintosh) and choose Cloaking > Cloak from the context menu. You'll see a red cross through the folder indicating that the folder is "cloaked". Now if you synchronize your local site with the remote site you won't be wasting time uploading large graphic files to your web server.
Updated: Friday, June 13, 2008 8:58 AM
Did you know we offer QuarkXPress training for both Windows and Macintosh platforms? Check out our training schedule.
Index of Topics
- Top Ten Tips for QuarkXPress
- Creating PDF's
- Working with multiple documents
- Right-indent tab
- Editing tabs in a style sheet
- Discretionary hyphen
- Smart Quotes
- Indent Here Command
- Absolute Page Numbers
- View Percentage Page Guides
- Copy Paragraph Style
- Easter Eggs
- Selecting Hidden Items
- PPD or PDF?
- Re-import Graphics
- Copy Pages to Another Document
- Copy Master Pages to Another Document
- Doing Math in text fields
- Removing Links
- Adding Links in Middle of Chain
- Quickly switch to master page
- Deleting pages without warning
- Change Tools palette to horizontal
- Copy item with Content tool
- Use the grabber hand to scroll. Hold the Option (Mac)/Alt (Win) key down, then move the mouse to scroll. Note that if Caps Lock is on, the grabber hand does not work on the Mac.
- Use the temporary Item tool: hold the Command (Mac)/Ctrl (Win) key down instead of switching tools in the tool palette.
- For XPress 4.0: Use the keyboard shortcuts for zooming: Control-click (Mac)/ Shift-right mouse button (Win) to zoom in; or Control-Option-click (Mac)/ Ctrl-Shift-right mouse button (Win) to zoom out.
For XPress 5.0 (Mac): Control-Shift-click to zoom in, Control-Option-click to zoom out. You can return the shortcut to using only Control to zoom as it did in version 4 by changing the preferences. Choose Edit > Preferences and then select Interactive. The Control key is now used for adding a contextual menu.
For XPress 5.0 (Win): Ctrl-Spacebar-click to zoom in, Ctrl-Alt-Spacebar-click to zoom out.
- To highlight the page view percentage field, type Control-V (Mac) / Ctrl-Alt-V (Win). Then type in the zoom amount and press the Enter or Return key. For Thumbnail view, type T in the field, then press the Enter or Return key.
- Set Preferences before you open a document. This defines application defaults for every new document you create.
- To quickly access the font field in the Measurement palette, type: Command-Shift-Option-M or Shift-F9 (Mac) / Ctrl-Shift-Alt-M or Shift-F9 (Win). When the field highlights, type in the first letters of the font. Press the Return/Enter key to make the change.
- If you want to insert one Zapf Dingbats character as you type, press Command-Shift-Z, let go, then type the letter for the Zapf Dingbats character. The font returns to the original as you continue to type. (For Mac only.)
- Press Command-Option-up arrow (Mac) / Ctrl-Alt-up arrow (Win) to move to the beginning of a story and Command-Option-down arrow (Mac) / Ctrl-Alt-down arrow (Win) to move to the end of a story.
- Press Command-Tab (Mac) ***/ Ctrl-Tab (Win) to move to the next tool in the Tool palette and Command-Shift-Tab (Mac) / Ctrl-Shift-Tab (Win) to move to the previous tool in the Tool palette.
- Hold down Option (Mac) / Alt (Win) when you select a tool in the palette. This keeps the tool selected so you can use it more than once. Click on another tool to disable the tool.
Mac 8.5 and above users*** The Mac OS has a default application switcher that uses the Command-Tab shortcut. If this is activated the Command-Tab shortcuts don't work in QuarkXPress. To remove the shortcuts, use the Help menu (in Finder) and search for "Application Switcher." Scroll down until you see Help me modify the keyboard shortcut. Click that link and follow the instructions to remove the shortcut.
In XPress 5.0 you can create PDF's of your document by choosing File > Export > Document as PDF. If you are on a Macintosh, you need to disable the OPI extension. Choose Utilities > Extension Manager and disable the OPI extension. If you don't, the PDF can't be printed and may display an error.
Working with Multiple Documents
If you have several document windows open, you can easily switch from one document to another by holding Shift as you click the document title bar. Choose the document you want to edit from the pop-up menu.
Type Option-Tab (Mac) or Shift-Tab (Win) to align the text to the right indent. Note: You do not have to set any tabs and the section of text after the Option/Shift-Tab always aligns to the right part of the text box, no matter what the width of the text box.
When you need to change a tabs setting in a style sheet, the easiest way is to go ahead and make the changes on the screen. Then create a brand new style sheet with the new tabs settings. Now delete the old style sheet definition. When you click on the Delete button in the Style sheet dialog box an alert box appears asking if you want to choose a replacement style for the deleted style. Pick the new name of the style you just created.
To add a discretionary hyphen, press Command-hyphen (Mac) Control-hyphen (Win) at the place where you want the word to break. If a line needs to break in the word QuarkXPress adds a hyphen at the break. If a word doesn't break no hyphen is added. Use the discretionary hyphen instead of a hard hyphen when you are manually hyphenating words. When you edit the copy and the hyphenated word moves, you don't have to remember to go back and remove the hard hyphen.
Put a discretionary hyphen before a word to turn auto hyphenation off for the word.
To make a non-breaking hyphen type Command-= (Mac) Control-Shift-hyphen (Win). A non-breaking hyphen ensures that if the word lands at the end of a line, it won't be broken. Use this on hyphenated words you do not want to break.
When you turn on Smart Quotes in the Applications Preferences menu, each time you type quotes, you get curly quotes. To temporarily turn them off to type inches or feet marks, hold the Control (Mac/Win) key as you press the single quote key to get feet, and hold Control-Shift (Mac) or Control-Alt (Win) as you press the quote key to get the inch mark.
A quick way to do a hanging indent is to use the indent here command. (A hanging indent is where a portion of the paragraph hangs outside the rest of the paragraph.) Type in Command-\ (Mac) Control-\ (Win) where you want the rest of the rest to start wrapping.
When you define sections in your document, you may find it difficult to print just the first page of the section. This is because QuarkXPress uses the absolute page number (the physical number of the page in your document) in the print range fields. Page one therefore is the first page in the document, not the first page in your section. To print absolute page numbers, use a plus symbol before the number in the field. If you want to print from the 24th page to the end of the document, type "+24" in the first field and either "end" or just leave blank in the second field.
Page guides can be defined to display only at a certain view percentage. Hold the Shift key down as you pull out the guide to lock the guide to the current view percentage. Use this when you are making precise alignments of objects on the page and you are zoomed in to a high magnification. The guides disappear automatically when you return to your normal viewing mode.
Normally I would always suggest to use style sheets for all your paragraphs. But there may be occassions when you just want to copy a paragraph style for another paragraph without creating a style sheet. To do this, first select the parapgraph that you want to format, then Option-Shift-click (Mac) Alt-Shift-click (Win) in the paragraph with the formatting you want to copy. The paragraph formatting is applied to the previous paragraph.
Hold the Option (Mac) key and choose About QuarkXPress from the Apple menu. Then hold the Shift-Option keys down and click on the window.
To grab an item that is buried beneath other items, hold the Command-Shift-Option (Mac) or Ctrl-Shift-Alt (Win) keys down as you click in the area of the item. As you continue to hold the keys and click, you select all items, one at time.
QuarkXPress 3.3 (Macintosh) uses both PPD (PostScript Description Files) and PDF (Printer Description Files) for selecting printers. Usually, PPD's are in the System Folder and PDF's are in your XPress folder. If a PPD and PDF have different parameters, XPress displays both of them in the pop-up list on Page Setup, otherwise XPress just displays the PDF. To tell the difference, hold the Shift key down as you click and hold on the Printer type in the Page Setup dialog box. All the PPD's will be displayed in italics.
If you want to reimport each graphic preview in your document automatically, hold the Command (Mac) or Ctl (Win) key while clicking Open in the Open dialog box. Each graphic is then reimported, creating new previews. All postitioning and scaling is maintained. This could help if you have corrupted graphics.
Copy Pages to Another Document
To copy pages from one document to another, use the Thnumbnail drag feature of QuarkXPress. Both documents must be the exact page size for this to work. Put both documents in Thumbnail view. (Type T in the Page View Percentage field and press Enter). Click on the page icon in the first document and drag it to the other document. Let go of the mouse when you are in the second document. Note that this doesn't work if the page you want to move has linked text.
Copy Master Page to Another Document
If you have two documents that are the same page size, you copy a master page from one document to the other using this method. Put both documents in Thumbnail view and change the window size of both so you can see both documents. Copy a page with the master page you want to the other document using the Thumbnail drag method. You cannot view master pages when you are in Thumbnail mode so you have to drag an actual page. You can always create a blank page at the end of the first document and apply the master page that you want to that page, then drag the blank page to the new document. If you want the style sheets as well, make sure that the first page has text with all the styles you want to copy.
Type Option-Tab to align the text to the right indent. Note: You do not have to set any tabs and the section of text after the Option-Tab always aligns to the right part of the text box, no matter what the width of the text box. (In the example below, type ? Text", Option-Tab, ? Text.")
When you need to change a tabs setting in a style sheet, the easiest way is to go ahead and make the changes on the screen. Then create a brand new style sheet with the new tabs settings. Now delete the old style sheet definition. When you click on the Delete button in the Style sheet dialog box an alert box appears asking if you want to choose a replacement style for the deleted style. Pick the new name of the style you just created.
To add a discretionary hyphen, press Command-hyphen (Mac) Control-hyphen (Win) at the place where you want the word to break. If a line needs to break in the word QuarkXPress adds a hyphen at the break. If a word doesn't break no hyphen is added. Use the discretionary hyphen instead of a hard hyphen when you are manually hyphenating words. When you edit the copy and the hyphenated word moves, you don't have to remember to go back and remove the hard hyphen.
Put a discretionary hyphen before a word to turn auto hyphenation off for the word.
To make a non-breaking hyphen type Command-= (Mac) Control-Shift-hyphen (Win). A non-breaking hyphen makes sure that if the word lands at the end of a line, it won't be broken. Use this on hyphenated words that you do not want to break.
When you're tweaking your text or changing with a box by adjusting the values in the Measurements palette, you can enter simple arithmetic expressions and then let QuarkXPress do the math. For example, to move an object 1/8 inch to the right, you could enter +.125" after the X coordinate value and then press Enter. Likewise, you can specify fractions by using the division sign -- the backslash. So go ahead and enter three and seven eighths as 3+7/8. XPress recognizes these operators: +, -, * and /.
If you use the Unlink tool to remove a text box from the middle of a chain, QuarkXPress breaks the link at that point, severing the remaining text boxes in the chain. When you want the text to continue to flow around the box you're removing from the chain, be sure to press the [Shift] key while you use the Unlink tool to click that box.
Adding Links in Middle of Chain
When you are on a page you can jump to the master page for that page by pressing Shift-F10. Press Shift-F10 to return to the document page.
You can select multiple pages in the Document palette by holding Command (Mac) or Ctrl (Win), then delete them by clicking the delete icon in the palette. Hold down Option (Mac) or Alt (Win) as you click the delete icon to bypass the dialog box asking if you are sure you want to delete the pages. Once deleted, your pages are gone, so make sure that is really what you want to do.
Change Tool palette to Horizontal
The Tool palette normally displays vertically. In Windows only, you can change the Tools palette to display horizontally by Ctrl-double-clicking on the Tool palette title bar. Repeat to return it to vertical. If you accidently close the palette choose View > Show Tools.
Copy Item with the Content tool
If you have the Content tool selected, you can copy the item without switching to the Item tool. Press Command-Option-C (Mac) or Ctrl-Alt-C (Win) to copy the item, or Command-Option-X (Mac) or Ctrl-Alt-X (Win) to cut the item.
Updated: Friday, June 13, 2008 8:58 AM
Did you know we offer four Flash MX classes for both Windows and Macintosh platforms? Check out our training schedule.
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While you are waiting, why not check out the classes we offer.
While you are waiting, why not check out the classes we offer.
