Framers: What good uses are Pods ?

[Harro de Jong]

Hassan Chamas wrote:

> 
> Let me be more specific. I am new to Framemaker but I am taking the time to learn
> it. Im looking to clarify the uses of  Pods.
> 
> I have read that Pods are frequently used dialog boxes that have an interface
> designed to simplify your work.
> 
> When I look at the panel and pods, whats the advantage of making it "easier" to use
> Pods when i have panels ? I know I don't have much experience, but I tried to learn
> more on the Internet and all I see is moving pods/panels around to make your
> workspace easier. Also, is their any efficiency  to using Pods rather then panels ? I
> guess what Im looking for are Framers who have experience and can give me their
> insight on their own experience and to get motivated to use them.

To answer your question: Pods give an overview of all markers/variables/text insets/conditions in a document. Panels allow you to edit one marker/variable/text inset/condition at a time. 


I'm afraid you've touched on a sore subject for many long-time Frame users. In Frame versions 1-8, pods didn't exist. All we had were panels. These were straightforward to use: Park them on your second monitor and refer to them as needed. Drag them anywhere you like and they would stay put. 

The panels had some disadvantages. They were not resizable, so in some panels, critical information could only be accessed by lots of scrolling. They also lacked information. For example, we had a Markers panel, but that only showed information on the currently selected marker. 

So Adobe came up with a new interface in Frame 9 to address these problems. The panels became resizable, and could now be stacked into tabbed panels. 
Pods were added to e.g. give an overview of all markers in a document. 

Unfortunately, the way Adobe created this new interface was not without problems. First, they threw out the old (Windows standard) user interface, and replaced it with an "Adobe standard" UI. In the Windows UI, every dialog box is an independent window. In the Adobe UI, all these boxes are attracted to each other, and desperately want to clump together in great big unwieldy masses, preferably overlapping the document you're working on. In the old interface, you could easily stack several documents, having them partially overlap. Very handy for comparing documents, moving text from one document to another etc. Try that in Frame 9, and you'll be tearing your hair out. 

The new pods give useful information. Unfortunately FrameMaker is really eager to keep the information in the pods up-to-date, and as a result some operations (like opening all documents in a book) slow to a crawl as FrameMaker updates the pod for every document it touches. 

Also new is the concept of workspaces. Basically they allow you to change the layout of the program for different operations. Open some dialogs and close others, place them in different locations, that sort of thing. Interesting idea, but you have to be very careful not to lose the changes you made. 


Harro de Jong
Triview