FIGURE 34.8  Functions and commands that used to require many clicks are now just an Alt+S away.

Snap to All and None We regularly want to ensure that all snaps are on or off. These commands exist; Corel chose not to place them on the View menu with the other snap toggles.

Select All Text This is the easiest way to accomplish this. The alternative is Edit Ø Select All Ø Text. That’s too many mouse clicks.

Treat As Filled There is an icon for this on one of the property bars, but it is so far to the right as to be cut off at many display resolutions. We kept forgetting it was there, so we added it to our Special menu.

Special Effects The next three items ease access to the tools in the toolbox that we invoke frequently, but are nested in flyouts. And we still like to work “un-interactively” at times with effects, so we were delighted to find that little jewel that opens whatever docker is relevant to the currently selected object.

PowerClip Now We see this as the prototypical candidate for improved access, the alternative being Effects Ø PowerClip Ø Place inside Container. Frankly, the best way to treat this command is with a hotkey, so stay tuned.

Convert to Grayscale We convert more images to grayscale than any other color depth, so it made sense to promote this command to one-click access.

Text Commands We’ll bet that most of you didn’t know that the first two commands of this section existed. Sure, you can dial up any spacing value you want in the Format Text dialog, but these are different—they automatically set spacing to 150% or 200%, figuring out for themselves what that would be, based on type size. These are two of the many commands hiding in the Customize treasure trove.

Photos and Clipart These are the two Scrapbook dockers that we use most often.

Drop Shadow Finally, you won’t find this command anywhere on your system. It is a script that we wrote for applying a simple drop shadow behind a selected object. Once we saved it as a script file, DRAW made it available for inclusion on any toolbar or menu.

In all of these cases, our chief criterion is obvious: which commands and functions require that we click through multiple menus, flyouts, or dialogs? As far as we’re concerned, any command that is nested in a flyout (meaning we would have to click three times, and possibly click and hold for one of them) had better be an item that we don’t use often. If we need it regularly, it gets promoted.

	TIP We have focused on customizing the main menu, but DRAW has other menus. Examine the drop-down list in Customize Ø Menus and you will find every context menu that DRAW offers (the one that appears when you right-click an object). One valuable customization strategy is simply to place the commands you use most often at the tops of each context menu.

The Keys to Happiness

Those who want to drive the CorelDRAW interface as fast as they can will look no further than their keyboards. We decline to debate which method is best—icons, menus, or keystrokes—as it is based on personal preference. But for pure speed, keystrokes will win all the time, and we’ll challenge anyone to a race to prove it. Keyboard users have yearned for Corel to provide more hotkeys, even if the developers have to use strange and bizarre ones (such as Alt+F3 for Lens and Ctrl+Shift+A for Copy Properties From). But you no longer have to accept weird key mnemonics or absent hotkeys. From Customize Ø Keyboard, you have total control.

Assigning and reassigning shortcut keys follows the same path as toolbars and menus: you get a list of every single command in DRAW-land, and then a box to type the shortcut key you want applied to the chosen command. If you choose a keystroke that is already in use, you must click Delete Conflicts in order to continue, and once you do, you then have the option to Navigate to Conflict—meaning DRAW gives you a chance to assign a new keystroke to the command that just lost its original one.

There are two distinct sets of shortcuts—text editing and everything else—and the View All button takes you to a dialog displaying every shortcut key in service, with options to print the list or export it to a file.

The one shortcut key that we think has saved us the most time is our Auto-PowerClip key. Here is how we created it.

1.  From Customize Ø Shortcut Keys, we drilled down to Effects Ø PowerClip Effects Ø Place Inside...

2.  In the Press New Shortcut Key box, we typed Ctrl+1.

We did not have to deal with Delete Conflicts because no other command or function uses this keystroke. (In fact, we found that Ctrl+1 through Ctrl+0 are excellent places to store custom shortcut keys.)

3.  We clicked Assign and then OK.

The reason we like this shortcut so much is that it allows us to operate with maximum efficiency and minimum effort. Imagine that you’re about to powerclip one object into another—the final action to be taken is a click with your mouse on an object on the page. That’s non-negotiable; there is no way to do that without using the mouse. Even if you know the cool shortcut of right-dragging one object atop another, it’s still a mouse-centric operation. So the last thing you want to have to do is traverse off the page to the menus to do a bunch of clicking, only to have to return to the page to click on the container. With the hotkey, it is so much simpler:

1.  Select the object to powerclip.

2.  Move your cursor to the desired container.

3.  Press Ctrl+1 and click.

That’s it—you’re done. Couldn’t be simpler.

Managing Workspaces

If you have followed along with this chapter, you have created a workspace to store all of your interface design changes, and perhaps thought of more than one workspace you can create:

•  Is your computer shared among multiple users? Each can have a workspace.

•  Do you have separate projects with radically different needs? Make workspaces for them.

•  Do you routinely change screen resolutions? Make a workspace that is better suited for lower resolutions.