Dockers

No, these aren’t pants; they are part of a new interface design, functioning like very flexible roll-ups. Go to Window Ø Dockers to see a list of services that used to be handled by roll-ups and are now in the custody of dockers. They get their name because they can be floated like roll-ups, or docked on the sides of the application. What’s more, if you open more than one docker, they all share the same space, as Figure 2.5 shows. We see a nice fit with owners of large displays; the jury might still be out as to how they are received by the 17-inch SVGA crowd.

New Line Styles

One of the true buried treasures in all previous DRAW versions was the method for changing the style of an outline. In earlier versions, there was an .ini file that stored line styles in what seemed to be a derivative of Morse code. Now there is the clean and simple dialog shown in Figure 2.6, where you can determine the precise pattern and its length.

You can read all about outlines in Chapter 7.

FIGURE 2.5  DRAW 8’s new dockers let you pack many functions into one space. Here, Symbols share space with styles and the Object Manager.

FIGURE 2.6  Creating a custom line style is now a simple matter of turning dots on or off.

Options Shmoptions

DRAW has always had a lot of user-selectable options and defaults. We never realized just how many until they were all put into one place. This could be seen as a good thing or a bad thing: being all in one place makes them easier to browse, no doubt, but—good grief—the Tools Ø Options dialog is now an encyclopedia!

Options have three main categories—Workspace, Document, and Global—and within those categories hide a dizzying array of subcategories. Figure 2.7 shows you one branch of the Workspace category, and when we created this screen image, we discovered with mild rejoicing the option to prevent symbol typefaces from appearing in standard font dialogs (we don’t have many occasions to set text in the Animals or Building typefaces...). But we practically stumbled across it; would we have been able to find it otherwise? This remains an open question and one that your own personal style with the program will ultimately answer. But one thing is for sure: it wouldn’t hurt at all for you to spend a good five or 10 minutes browsing the pages that make up this new and voluminous network of program options.

FIGURE 2.7  You want options? DRAW’s got options. Lots and lots of options.

As mentioned earlier in this section, one powerful component to DRAW’s approach to user settings is the ability to save practically any of them as defaults for new drawings.

Redesigned Print Engine

DRAW 8 uses a standard tabbed dialog to house all of the print options. In version 7, there was an Options button that appeared to take the user to an entirely different place. The new design is much cleaner. Chapter 26 includes chapter and verse on print features, new and old.

Size Graphic on Import

When you import a graphic, now you receive a prompt enabling you to place the graphic in the standard way (by just clicking once), or by determining the size of the graphic on the page (by clicking and dragging).

Custom Page Sizes

If you create a page size for a special job that doesn’t fall into any conventional category, you can save the size as a custom size, assign a name to it, and easily retrieve it later.

Creation Tools

Most of the features discussed so far don’t focus on creating new objects, but on improving access to existing tools. There are a handful of features that speak directly to new object creation, and this section explores them.

Drop Shadow

As this is an interactive tool, we already discussed it in the previous section. But we think it is one of the stellar features of this release, worthy of another mention. We know from our conferences how many users want to create shadows behind elements, and this new automated feature does it better and faster than all previous methods.

Duotones

A duotone is one of the most economical ways to add color to a low-budget print project or a photo that was originally black and white. Think of a duotone as “black plus one spot color,” although the two colors can be any two spot colors at all.

From the Bitmaps menu, you can also create monotones, tritones, and quadtones. Monotones are excellent for applying a different ink color to a black-and-white photograph.

Distortions

This is the one gee-whiz feature added to version 8, but it hasn’t proved to scratch many creative itches. With the Interactive Distortion tool, you can create truly bizarre variations of single objects or strings of artistic text. Figure 2.8 shows the three types of distortion that can be applied to objects: Push/Pull, Zipper, and Twister. Pull the electronic throttle a small amount to create the middle image of each of the three columns; lean on the throttle to create the unintelligible spikes, blobs, and twirls in the bottom images.

We don’t devote much space to them. In fact, you just read our entire coverage of distortions.

Unbelievably, the text that is being so horribly disfigured in Figure 2.8 is still editable text.

FIGURE 2.8  Three types of distortion are now available to, uh, grace your illustrations.

Inflate Bitmap

This featurette was likely added solely to address one nagging problem with DRAW 7 and its support for bitmap effects. With version 7, if you applied a bitmap effect, like a blur, to an object with a fixed bounding box, the effect would get clipped off if it stretched beyond the bounding box. With the Inflate Bitmap option checked (from Bitmaps Ø Inflate Bitmap), you can instruct DRAW to provide as much room as the bitmap effect requires.

Object Controls

In this category, we place any new functions that address the manipulation or selection of objects. This category has two very nice improvements, and a couple of klunkers, as well...

Object Manager

This roll-up was a powerful addition to version 7, yet was not used very often by most users. In version 8, now as a docker, it is guaranteed to be visited more often, because the Layers Manager has been rolled into it. The first few times, you will fumble around looking for the familiar Layers roll-up, and then you will remember. A few minutes of practice is all you’ll need with this new integrated set of object services.

Digging

This curious term came about because this is what you now do: go digging for objects that are hiding under other objects. Prior to version 8, there was no way to select objects that were underneath others, except to press Tab repeatedly (and ad infinitum if your page contains many objects). Now you can Alt+click on an object to select the object underneath, the one underneath that one, etc., etc.

Once selected, you can resize the object with its selection handles, as always, and thanks to node-tracking and the × in the center of selected objects, you can also move an object and even node-edit it.