Making the Most of Your Effort: Shared Content
Page 5

Synchronizing Multiple Objects

For our purpose, to synchronize multiple objects, we will be setting up our composition zone as displayed in figure 13. That means that the new composition zone will be saved for use in this project only, internally, and not displayed as an additional layout.

The result is a new entry in our shared content palette, called Launch 7, that we can drag on to the page. Once I drag a new instance of Launch 7 on to the page, I now have two instances of this synchronized group. See figure 14.

Figure 14 I’ve created the composition zone, shared it, and then dragged a second instance of Launch 7 onto the page.

If I need to edit it, I simply select one of the Launch 7 composition zones and go to Item q Composition Zone q Edit. This will open a new project with a fully editable version of the zone (see figure 15). As I make changes to the synchronized items in the new window, both Launch 7 items update automatically in the original project.

Figure 15 I’m now editing the internal composition zone and, as I do so, the changes are made automatically in the original layout.

If you refer back to figure 10, you will see this very same Launch 7 concept. I converted it to a composition zone and used it in all three of the designs. This is a pretty impressive aspect of composition zones that often gets overlooked.

Unsynchronizing

Unsynchronizing is an important feature if you need to break the link between different instances of synchronized content. For example, let’s say that I have some text synchronized and I need to break off one of those instances so that I can edit it separately from other objects. To break the link, simply select the item that you need to unsynchronize, and choose item > unsynchronize. This will break that item away as a freestanding object that you can edit independently.

There may also be times when you want to completely unsynchronize all instances of a synchronized item. To do that, select the item that needs to be unsynchronized directly inside the shared content palette. Once selected, click the unsynchronize all button on the palette (fifth button from the left). This will leave the previously synchronized items on the pages, but there will no longer be a link between them.

Conclusion

The point here is that whether you are a designer, a layout artist, or any other person in the publication-production process, synchronization and composition zones can help you reuse and edit multiple portions of common designs quickly and easily. These features can dramatically increase your efficiency as well as distribute common design elements across one or even multiple projects.

Don’t forget to have fun playing with different combinations of the synchronize options. Different combinations can give you different levels of flexibility, and in the case of the big Launch 7 design I mentioned earlier, you can actually streamline the production of complex designs. Whether synchronizing design elements, a legal notice, business card info, or more, you’ll certainly have an adventure experimenting with the possibilities.

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