This is a great shortcut that has been a long time coming and has finally arrived in InDesign CS3. When typing in a text box press ESC to lose focus on the text frame and switch to the Selection tool. I can’t tell you how many times I have typed a “v” or “a” in text being such a keystroke freak. Thankfully, I am also aware that it is a habit of mine and so far I have never had a “v” stick around long enough to see a printed piece.
This is probably the reason why Quark made such user-unfriendly keystrokes. Just to prevent this kind of thing from happening. It is a sensible thing to do, but this is why proofreaders exist. And spell check. I would rather have the option to make that mistake than to be limited to whatever the keystroke is for all of Quark’s tools. I’m pretty rusty, but I think it was (option command TAB) to cycle forward and (shift option command TAB) to cycle backward. That gives me Carpal Tunnel just thinking about it. Read more …
Sometimes after putting a design together you decide that it might benefit from some rounded edges. Instead of deleting the rectangle in the design and redrawing a new rounded rectangle to the proper size and position you can simply run a filter on the existing rectangle and get a rounded rectangle. Go to Filter > Stylize > Round Corners. This filter allows you to add rounded edges to the existing shape. When most think of rounded corners it is usually for rectangles. But rounded edges can easily be added to anything that has a point, so a polygon like a octagon or a triangle can be rounded just like a rectangle would.
The filter is a good method, but it is a destructive process, meaning that it cannot be edited after it has been applied. For a non destructive version of the filter go to Effect >Stylize > Round Corners. The result will be the same except the instance of this effect can be edited with the Appearance panel. It also can be applied to any shape that has a point.