Navigating your document
The two primary methods for navigating around your document are scrolling (also called panning) and changing the view magnification (also called zooming).
Scrolling
Although the workspace in Expression Design is essentially boundless (depending on how far from the document page you place an object), there are four ways to scroll around your file.
- Scroll bars The scroll bars on the right side and bottom of the document window act similarly to the scroll bars in most applications you're familiar with. You can drag the scroll handle or click the scroll bar arrows to move in that direction. However, because of the limitless nature of the Expression Design workspace, you'll notice that when you pan to the limit of the scroll bar, it immediately updates to offer you the opportunity to scroll a little more.
- Pan tool The
Pan
tool
in the Toolbox lets you scroll the view area around by clicking and dragging. You can select the Pan tool in the Toolbox by pressing "H" at any time. Or, for a temporary Pan tool, hold down the Spacebar and then click and drag in the view area.
- Mouse wheel By default, the mouse wheel (if your mouse has one) is set to zoom in and out on the page (centered on the position of your mouse cursor). However, you can change this default to scroll the view area in the General panel of the Options dialog box.
- Menu commands The View menu offers several ways to scroll and zoom around your document. For information, see "Zooming," below. For more information about rotating the view area, see Rotating View Area.
Zooming
You can magnify any portion of the view area up to 6,400% (64x normal) or zoom back to about 3% (.03x).
- Zoom tool When
you select the Zoom
tool
from the Toolbox, you can click anywhere in the view area to zoom in on that position. Hold down the ALT key when you click to zoom out. While you can press Z to select the Zoom tool, you can also switch to it temporarily by holding down CTRL+Spacebar (for zooming in) or CTRL+ALT+Spacebar (for zooming out). Also, double-clicking on the Zoom tool zooms to display all objects in the document.
- Zoom drop-down list Expression Design always displays the current view magnification in the lower-left corner of the document window. You can click this number to display the Zoom drop-down list, in which you can choose a magnification setting.
Click on the Zoom drop-down list to change magnification
- Mouse wheel By default, moving the scroll wheel lets you zoom in and out based on the position of the mouse cursor. You can change this behavior so that it will zoom in or out of the center point of the view area (the center of what is visible onscreen) by clearing the Mouse wheel zoom about mouse position option in the General page of the Options dialog box.
- Menu commands There are a number of menu commands
and associated keyboard shortcuts for zooming (and sometimes scrolling).
- Click Zoom In on the View menu (or press CTRL and the plus key (+) on your keyboard) to zoom in, or click Zoom Out on the View menu (or press CTRL and the hyphen key (-)) to zoom out, based on the center of the visible screen.
- Click Zoom On Selection on the View menu to zoom to the highest magnification level at which the currently selected object(s) can be fully shown.
- Click Fit to Screen on the View menu (or press CTRL+0) to zoom to the highest magnification level at which all visible objects in your document can be shown. Alternately, you can double-click on the Zoom tool, which does the same thing. This is helpful for getting the "big picture."
- Click Actual Size on the View menu (or press CTRL+1) to return to 100% view. You can also zoom to 100% view by double-clicking the Pan tool.
- Click Center View on the View menu to zoom to 100% view and scroll so that the document frame is centered in the window.