Common Basic Errors Made When Using QuarkXPress (Benjamin Williams)
Mar 6, 2010
If you have recently started using QuarkXPress, you may perhaps find yourself making some of the errors outlined in this article. Take a minute to read through our top beginner pitfalls and spare yourself a little frustration in getting to grips with your new software.
When you create a new project in QuarkXPress, the New Document window appears. Users new to QuarkXPress will often create a new project and click OK without taking the slightest notice of the settings in the New Project dialogue. Quark keeps the settings from the last project you created. If these are unsuitable for the document you are about to create, adjust the page size, orientation, margin and column guides as needed.
Having set margins when creating a new project, many new QuarkXPress users will still feel inclined to set their text and picture boxes inside the margin guides, leaving an extra gap. Remember, the blue outline denote the margin guides not the edges of the page. Normally, the edges of your text boxes will need to be positioned on the margin rather then inside them.
There are two main ways of aligning elements on a QuarkXPress page: ruler guides and measurements. Most new QuarkXPress users are seduced by the ease with which guides can be created (just drag them onto the page from either the horizontal or vertical ruler) and end up with a page covered in these green guides. Guides are very useful but it is often just as easy to change the X and Y measurements of elements. Making the X measurements the same aligns left edges, Y aligns top edges. The measurements window will also perform basic calculations for you. For example, to double the gap to the left of a text box, just tye "*2" (i.e. multiplied by 2) after the current X value and press Enter.
A classic error beginners make when using guides to align objects is as follows. They drag a guide and align it (by eye) with one of the edges of a box then they snap a second box onto the guide. This means that only the second box is actually snapped to the guide. Remember that both boxes need to be snapped to the guide to get the full benefit from them. Since one of the edges of the original box was used as a reference point for the guide, it will be almost aligned but not quite: it just needs to be moved slightly until it actually snaps to the guide. Position the mouse pointer over the appropriate middle handle of the box until the cursor changes to a pointing finger. Click and drag the handle so that it snaps to the guide. (If necessary, move the handle away from the guide and then back onto it to feel the magnetic snap.)
When you create a new project in QuarkXPress, you will notice an option marked "Automatic Text Box". This feature is designed to be used with long documents consisting mainly of text. It's not really meant to be used for short documents or documents consisting of only one page.
A lot of inexperienced Quark users conclude that this feature just means that you don't have to create the text box yourself, the program creates it for you. In reality, the automatic text box has a sting in its tail. When it becomes filled with text, it immediately generates a new page, also containing an automatic text box and so on. So, if you use automatic text boxes on single page layouts, you run the risk of having unwanted pages being generated if your text box becomes filled with tex (which can easily happen as you experiment with different typefaces and type sizes.
The text box tool can also be a source of confusion among people who have recently started using QuarkXPress. The text box tool is used to create text boxes. It can't be used for anything else. However, you will often see new users attempting to use it to edit the text within the box. In fact, the content tool is the only tool which can be used to edit text.
You will also often see new users attempting to edit text or move a picture inside a picture box when the Item tool is highlighted. This is a non-starter since the contents of a box can only be edited with the content tool. Admittedly, most users will eventually realise this if only through trial and error.
Many new users also insist on always ensuring that they select the item tool whenever they want to resize a text or picture box. In fact, you can resize a box regardless of whether the item or content tool is selected.
Beginners tend to create a lot more text boxes than they actually need. They'll create a box for a heading, another for the sub heading and so on. Actually, you can change your formatting within the same QuarkXPress text box as many times as you like. There is no need to create a new box each time the format changes. You only really need separate boxes where there are attributes which can't exist within the same box such as the number of columns.
In QuarkXPress, unless a text or picture box is given a frame or background fill, it will not print. Yet many Quark users insist on carefully setting attributes like the vertical alignment of the text within the box. Remember, there is no box there: all that matters is the text inside the box. QuarkXPress has a print preview feature which is obtained by pressing F7. This shows the elements that will actually print and hides all guides and design frames. Using this feature can help to remind new users which elements are printable and which are simply visual aids.
About the AuthorThe The writer of this article is a trainer and developer with OnSiteTrainingCourses.Coms, a UK IT training company offering QuarkXPress training courses in London and throughout the UK..