Is it possible to orient CS3 Menu 'tabs' vertically?

[TMBI]

In InDesign CS2 I used to have all of my most used menus arranged on the right side of the screen, with the palette 'tabs' or 'headings' arranged vertically down the left side of the menus. That way, every time I clicked on a 'tab' (eg pages, links or layers) I had a full-height menu showing the full content of that particular menu. I liked it that way because I always got to see everything available in that menu. I seem to remember that I did it simply by dragging the 'tab' to the side of the menu.

In CS3, however, I cannot find a way to do this. It seems that I can arrange my menus together, but only if I have the 'tabs' at the top of each menu group, and so I have to have a number of groups in order to see my most used menus. Unfortunately this means that I am forever collapsing and expanding menus. Am I missing the obvious, or is it something that has now been disabled?


Tosh

 

[eugenetyson]

Well you can't stack them vertically, and to be honest I don't use CS2 anymore but when I do I find the vertical tabs clumsy compared to CS3.

It takes a bit of getting used to.

But you can push the docked panels into the side so it shows the icon, you just have to get to know the icons.

Clicking the top of the dock expands and collapsing the panels.

And clicking one icon when the dock is collapsed the panel will show, but hide automatically when you select another panel.

You can see the panels are separated, and clicking on Pages and then Info, it will swap through the Tabs on the Panel.

When you click another section on the Docked Icons it will collapse the last set of panels you were using.

You can drag any icons together that you want to use and stack them with each other.

You can also use Window>Workspace>Save Workspace when you have all the panels laid out the way you want on screen that you need for your project.

For long documents I have a workspace that uses Paragraph Styles, Character Styles and Swatches.

You can also stack panels on the left side of the screen beside the Tools.

I find the CS3 way a bit more versatile and it does take a bit of getting used to.

http://www.doozler.blogspot.com/

 

[TMBI]

Thanks very much for the tip. Your suggestion is actually about the best way I could hope for, really, as it's the closest thing to the old way of working. At least that way I can save some of the panels as full height so I can see as much as possible.

Strangely, though, for some reason some of the panels will not resize, and so I now have a funny mixture of some wide, not very tall panels, and some narrow, full height panels. For example, I can resize the Swatch panel but not the Colour panel. I'm not sure what the thinking is at Adobe behind this, but it's very frustrating not being able to customise the menus at least as much as you could before.

Thanks a lot for your help, in the meantime, I'll keep looking to see if there's any way to create a full dock.

Tosh

 

[eugenetyson]

It's probably because you don't need to resize those panels, they only fit a bit of information and there's no need to make them any bigger or smaller. Why programme something you don't need?

Although it's a fair point.

Check this out:

http://indesignsecrets.com/indesign-cs3-interface-preview.php

http://indesignsecrets.com/stashing-panels-on-the-left-side-of-the-screen.php

http://indesignsecrets.com/double-wide-cs3-control-panel.php

http://www.doozler.blogspot.com/

 

[TMBI]

What actually happened, I originally expanded the side dock by dragging the workspace window bottom corner in as far as it would go, (I was working on a square format document) so as to give me the maximum menu area possible. Now, for some reason, it won't go back to where it was, but stays really wide on some of the menus. It's a bit weird, really, and I'm not sure how to get back to the standard setup I had before.

Ideally, I'd like to just have the menus in a sort of reserved area on the right hand side, but it seems apparent that I won't be able to do that. Thanks for your suggestion, I'll stick with it for the time being. If I find a way of doing what I want, I'll let you know.

Thanks for the links too, they're really helpful.

Tosh

 

[eugenetyson]

I'm not really sure what you are talking about, so it's hard to know how to direct you.

Screen shots would be helpful.

Eugene

http://www.doozler.blogspot.com/

 

[TMBI]

Sorry Eugene for not being clear. I'm away for the weekend now, but will try to sort out some screenshots for you next week.

Tosh

 

[eugenetyson]

Cool.

http://www.doozler.blogspot.com/