CorelDRAW X5 : Navigation and Page Setup - Special View Modes, Using the View Navigator

1. Special View Modes

Other types of views are found in CorelDRAW. In addition to viewing quality and resolution, you might have the need to change the page order in a multi-page document for a tidier presentation. Hey, you could certainly do with a preview setting that eliminates the workspace and puts the focus on your artwork!

The following sections explore these features, how to work with them, and how to provide views of your work you might not even have considered. You’re going to love this stuff.

Page Sorter View

CorelDRAW Page Sorter view  becomes available as a special view mode when your document has at least one page; two or more pages will be more useful, because it’s silly to try to sort one page (and impossible if you have less than one page). To go into Page Sorter View mode, choose View | Page Sorter View. While viewing a document in the Page Sorter, you can browse several pages at one time and manage their properties as a collection instead of thumbing through single pages. While you’re using this view, your pages and all their contents are displayed in miniature, but no other view in CorelDRAW can show you a complete document page flow and offer you the chance to reorder pages and their properties in one fell swoop. The Pick tool is the only available tool in this view, and the property bar displays several options unique to this document view. You can reorder pages by dragging them to different locations in the current order, or right-click specific pages to rename, insert, and delete them (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. Page reordering in a multi-page document is as easy as drag and drop.

Full-Screen Preview

To fill the entire screen with a view of your current document page at the current zoom level, use View | Full-Screen Preview, or press the F9 shortcut key. This view hides all of the CorelDRAW interface—including your cursor—and shows only the current view rendered in Enhanced view mode (the Full-Screen Preview default view). To return your view to Normal, press any key or click either mouse button.

While you’re using Full-Screen Preview, the view mode and page border view appearance is set according to preferences in the Options dialog. To access these options, choose Tools | Options (CTRL+J) and click Display under the Workspace category on the left side of the dialog to access the Display options. Full-Screen Preview options, located in the lower part of the dialog, let you choose either draft or enhanced (the default) view as the view mode, and either show or hide the page border.

Previewing Selected Only

The Preview Selected Only command, available from the View menu, lets you preview only what’s selected on the page before entering this mode. This option works using the Full-Screen Preview preferences and takes a toggle state either On or Off when selected. There are two caveats to using this command: if no objects are selected, the Full-Screen Preview offers a nice, energy-wasting white blank screen; you’ll also get similar all-white views if the selected object is not in view before entering this mode. The result you get with Preview Selected Only depends entirely on what’s framed in the document window at what viewing resolution you have defined before using the command.

2. Using the View Navigator

The View Navigator is a pop-up viewer that is indispensable for navigating your entire document page when you’ve zoomed in to 10,000 percent and need to quickly move to a different design area without zooming out to get your bearings. The View Navigator pop-up window is at the point where the vertical and horizontal scroll bars meet at the lower-right corner of the document window. To open the View Navigator pop-up, click-hold the button, the magnifying glass icon.

Click-holding the icon displays a pop-up thumbnail that represents the outermost region of the page and the application’s desktop. The preview frame—the tiny rectangle with the crosshairs through it—within the View Navigator window indicates the viewing limitations according to your current Zoom settings. Click-drag within the View Navigator pop-up window to pan around your drawing in the document window; it’s panning by proxy. As you drag, releasing the mouse button ends the navigation.

In Figure 2 you can see the View Navigator put to the test. Let’s say you need to view or edit one of the gumballs in the machine. At 100 percent viewing resolution this would be a true hassle; luckily, by zooming in, it’s easy to see the gumballs to such a detailed extent that you could wipe the foolish grin off the center one with the Shape tool, simply by homing in on this roguish piece of candy by panning the window using the View Navigator.

Figure 2. The View Navigator steers you in the right direction for precise editing in very tight views.