FrameMaker 12 Feature Focus 5) Productivity Enhancements

FrameMaker 12 introduced many productivity enhancements. This blog will focus on the benefits of four new enhancements:

• Enhancements to Smart Catalogs
• Automatically “box” paragraphs with colored backgrounds
• Single-click to restore last session (remember files and locations)
• New “Open Files” pod to close or save multiple files at once

FrameMaker 12 Smart Catalog enhancements

A previous release of FrameMaker introduced an improved, smart catalog that would display your choices of paragraphs, character or table styles or XML elements with a keyboard shortcuts. FrameMaker 12 has improved this feature dramatically by adding a “filter” feature.

For instance, if you have pressed Control-9 to display the Paragraph Catalog, you can then type in the first few characters of the desired style name, and all other entries will be filtered out.

The screen shot below shows an example of the smart catalog for paragraphs limiting choices to those styles that start with the letter “n” …
https://blog.adobe.com/media_d1af6bdf0652bcb85fbc61f75777b72964ac1d99.gif

Beyond Smart Catalogs

The new “FIND/FILTER” capabilities has also been added to most pods. If you have an open pod that displays multiple choices (e.g. variables, markers. In the screen shot below, you see how index markers will display after “seat” has been entered in the FIND window in the upper right corner, to hide all markers that do not contain those characters:

https://blog.adobe.com/media_8e56ae42d6e5a1005468808a56761a1b9d7eb0c4.gif

See a dynamic video demonstration of smart catalogs

Click on the video below to see a brief, video demonstration of this feature.

//tv.adobe.com/embed/1434/21823/

Automatic colored/boxed backgrounds for paragraphs

An earlier version of FrameMaker introduced the ability to apply a colored “highligher” pen background to text on a character basis. This feature had some limitations:

• white cracks would appear between lines unless linespacing was “solid”
• colored background would only appear where text was present: it did not extend to the right margin at paragraph end

The new background attribute will can be found in FrameMaker 12 in the Paragraph Designer on the Advanced Tab, as indicated in the screen shot below:

https://blog.adobe.com/media_26632bcda8e29303526b4a1ee36d4e15a53422ae.gif

See a dynamic video demonstration of paragraph background color

Click on the video below to see a simple, start-to-finish “how to” video for use of this new formatting feature.

//tv.adobe.com/embed/1434/21837/

Single click “Restore Last Session” to open previous files “in place”

One of the biggest time savers in FrameMaker 12 is the ability to “remember” the files that were saved the last time you closed or exited FrameMaker. You can save countless hours each year by swiftly restoring a work session and having exactly the files open that you last worked with, and find your insertion point on the same file and at the same zoom level.

See a dynamic video demonstration of “restore last session”

Click on the video below to see a dynamic example of this new feature:

//tv.adobe.com/embed/1434/21822/

Improved File Handling with Open Files Pod

FrameMaker 12 has added an additional optional pod which allows you to perform actions to multiple files. the Open Files Pod will display all open files with check boxes. Each file is preceded with a check box. After selecting files, you may:

• Save Files
• Save and Close Files
• Close Files w/o Saving

See a dynamic video demonstration of “currently opened files pod”

Click on the video below to see a dynamic example of this new feature:

//tv.adobe.com/embed/1434/21815/