every time I want to change something in one of my text layers, I have to click it on the site list to the left, then ever-so-slowly arrow it over onto the pasteboard, make my change, and then carefully line it back up onto the document. That makes it hard to do edits.
Wouldn’t life be great if there was an easier way?
Well - life IS great.
First, you can click ‘through’ items that are in a stack, so you don’t have to use the Page view in the Site panel. Just hold down the Command and Option keys (that’s Apple and Alt if you prefer) and click, click, click. Each click selects the next item below. Keep track of which item is selected by looking at the name in the Inspector palette. (You did name things usefully, right?
Then, when you have the right item selected, just hit the Enter key (no, NOT the Return key - there is a difference!) and the selected item will be ‘opened’ for text editing with the content shown above all other elements even though the item remains where it is in the stack.
You can’t click and drag with the mouse to select text, but you can use keyboard commands. Use the arrow keys to navigate around the text, use those with the Shift key to select chunks, and simply use Command-A to select all text.
Command-Option-click once more to ‘close’ the item and keep it selected - so you can Command-Option-click again to keep tunneling down the stack… or just click elsewhere to deselect.
If you still want to move something off the page onto the pasteboard so you can work on it separately, look in the Inspector palette and try just setting the item’s left inset to a different value and hitting Return. Stick a minus in front of the number, or use some value that relates to the original number. That way it will be easy to send it back to the original location in your page: just put in the original left inset number ( or whatever you changed) and you’re done.
Another one to print out! Thanks, yet again, Keith. It’s funny (well, not really) how some of the most minute things that actually have little to do with an action can take up so much time without this kind of help.
I hope one day I’m in a position to be even remotely helpful to other Freeway users. This forum is a big, big part of why I use Freeway.
(Walter, we had slipped off the topic of Carousel specifically and onto the “show/hide target” layer action. In fact, it was because of my inability to easily deal with that action that I began thinking of Carousel as a very attractive alternative to accomplish pretty much the same thing and perhaps much more so. I’m duplicating tmy original page, and my intent is to do what I want on the second with Carousel. Good for my never-ending learning curve and to see which effect I like best.)
Hey, can anyone tell me if there is an Action already that makes a
Show/Hide slideshow all at once, similar to how the Carousel works?
If there isn’t, It occurs to me that with a little jiggering, I could
remove the sliding animation part of how the Action works, and replace
it with a way to manage a fade transition.
Instead of gathering up all the panes and making them inline elements
in a “film strip”, I would simply stack them within the main element
(on the z-axis) and hide all but the current one. Whichever one was
current would be given a ridiculously high z-axis, and when you
clicked next or a tab, the next pane one would be moved to the highest
z-axis and then faded in (which makes a perfect cross-fade with no
need to also animate the other image out of view).
Walter
On Mar 13, 2010, at 1:29 PM, LauraB wrote:
Another one to print out! Thanks, yet again, Keith. It’s funny
(well, not really) how some of the most minute things that actually
have little to do with an action can take up so much time without
this kind of help.
I hope one day I’m in a position to be even remotely helpful to
other Freeway users. This forum is a big, big part of why I use
Freeway.
(Walter, we had slipped off the topic of Carousel specifically and
onto the “show/hide target” layer action. In fact, it was because of
my inability to easily deal with that action that I began thinking
of Carousel as a very attractive alternative to accomplish pretty
much the same thing and perhaps much more so. I’m duplicating tmy
original page, and my intent is to do what I want on the second with
Carousel. Good for my never-ending learning curve and to see which
effect I like best.)
tell me if there is an Action already that makes a Show/Hide slideshow all at once, similar to how the Carousel works
Don’t know about the nuts and bolts of it but Weavers Moo based fading slideshow lends itself to being converted to script/protaculous libraries does it not?
My video used the latest action set I believe, so Keith’s instructions didn’t look any different than what I did other than using Text-based items instead of just straight graphics.
Hi, Dan. Your videos are terrific and although I thought the carousel video might be making use of the latest techniques, I wasn’t quite sure. When I saw what the Coda site was doing I could really see how to expand its use. (For me, the text-based items are a real boon.) Point seems to be that Carousel offers a variety of possibilities that everyone can use to their own advantage. Lovin’ it so far.
Wouldn’t life be great if there was an easier way?
Well - life IS great.
Thank you Keith. I have wanted to be able to do that for some but with no solution. As a user of Illustrator I am in the habit of locking a layer so I can edit it without inadvertantly selecting others. Not possible in Freeway till I read this which will make editing stacked and overlapping items more of a breeze. Did I overlook this bit of info in the manual?
Do you think it is possible (or desirable) for Softpress to make the ‘Lock’ option in the Inspector to work in the illustrator manner - ie Lock and make unselectable? rather than just anchor an item in place?
