Foxy stuff on master pages

[Steve Rickaby]

Hi Framers

In off-group discussions with Angela and others, it's become only too clear that it's possible to create clever stuff on master pages that is obvious to its designer but to no-one else ;-) For example, the auto thumbtabs stuff which came up recently on the group, or anything that involves a template with complex frames on master pages. Because this often involves overlaying transparent objects, it can create a maintenance headache for whoever comes afterwards, as recently witnessed by someone on the group who had to get an expert to fox out how their template was working [that was a thumbtabs thing]. It's real important therefore to document how the template works, if only in a few lines.

In the case I'm discussing with Angela, switchable page backgrounds, when the technique is working there are multiple conditionalised anchored frames on a master page, all the same size, all overlaying each other, and with their boundaries and anchors nudged outside the displayed area to create the required crop margins. That sort of thing would be enough to fox anyone.

A way to ensure that the description travels around with the template is to add one or more extra reference pages called 'Notes' or somesuch, and put a brief potted description of how the template - or it's more foxy features - operates there. That way the 'docs' can only be lost if someone deliberately deletes the relevant reference page(s).

When massing with multiple frames on master pages, it's a lot easier to see what's going on if you give the various frames a temporary - and different - fill pattern and/or colored border. When you've finished dickering with them, you can use the Find > anchored frame feature to select them one by one and remove the decorations. I use this when building frames for moving thumbtabs to get the stacking order for the various frames correct.

Hope this helps someone.

-- 
Steve