The Adobe Illustrator Wow! Booklet for June 2013 CC Release: Tips, Tricks, and Step-by-Step Techniques with the New Creative Tools

6 The Adobe Illustrator WOW! Booklet for June 2013 CC Release

(Windows) discontiguous les to select several les at

the same time. Choose whether to link the les or embed

them, and whether or not to show Import Options when

placing them. Templates and Replace are unavailable when

more than one le has been selected.

Back in Illustrator, your cursor will display the thumb-

nail of the le you're about to place, along with the num-

ber of the le you're about to place—for instance, 2/7

means you've selected the second of seven les. To place

a le that isn't displayed, use the le and right arrows on

your keyboard to cycle through to the one you do want. If

you decide now you don't want a le, press the Esc key to

drop that le from the queue.

Place the image in your document by dragging out

a marquee, which is constrained proportionally to the

image, or by clicking once in the document to place

the le at full size. If you didn't choose to show Import

Options in the Place dialog, and depending upon both

whether the le type supports options and whether or not

you have Link enabled, you can still sometimes choose

Import Options on the y; press Shi and click once to

bring up that le's import options, select an option, click

OK, and you're back to the Place cursor ready to place the

le. If you choose Show Import Options in the Place dia-

log, Illustrator will rst page through the les, bringing up

any import options for each one, before you place any of

the les.

THE NEW CSS PROPERTIES PANEL (FOR WEB DESIGN)

Using Illustrator for site design got a boost with the new

CSS Properties panel. Design the elements for a web page,

create a mockup on the artboard, and then generate the

basic HTML in your favorite HTML editor. You can now

use Illustrator to generate the CSS you need for styling and

positioning the elements. Character Styles and Graphic

Styles are automatically displayed in the CSS panel, while

selecting either an object on the artboard or a style in

the panel will display its CSS code. Use the CSS Options

dialog to make choices about the code that Illustrator gen-

Illustrator is Not InDesign

Although Illustrator and InDesign

have many similar features, such

as the new multifile Place feature,

Illustrator's Place is not identical

to InDesign's Place. InDesign al-

lows you to select multiple files in

Bridge and drag them onto your

document, loading the “place

gun” cursor with all those files

at the same time. Illustrator, as

of this writing, only lets you drag

and drop one file from Bridge,

although using Place from the

context menu does allow for mul-

tiple files. InDesign also lets you

undo placing files, reloading the

“place gun” with each Undo, even

after you have placed the last file.

Illustrator lets you undo and re-

load the cursor

only until you have

placed the last file. Once the place

gun is empty, it can't be reloaded

using Undo. And finally, you won't

be able to create a grid while plac-

ing files as you can with InDesign.

The CSS Properties panel displays all type and

graphic styles that it can generate code for (top

half), and the code for selected objects (bottom

half)