By default, the main toolbox on the left hand side of the screen is one single long column. If the computer screen you're using is a laptop say and is not super high resolution (mine is 1366 x 768), some tools of the toolbox are truncated and end up under a rather cryptic icon with a right facing stacked double V shape (think arrow heads sort of). It's all fine and dandy but some of the tools that are this low in the "stacking tree" are kind of critical to everyday use. Pen outline and Fill adjustments are the ones I use the most (I realize the pen outline ability is also on the right hand size of the lower portion of the GUI too and is visible constantly but it doesn't behave like the Outline Pen TOOL itself). On a high resolution screen this is not a problem for me because I have a lot of screen real estate to use and all the tools are visible in the GUI.
Is there a permanent dockable way to get the main toolbox into 2 columns wide WITHOUT floating it? I know I can do this by unlocking my toolbars and then dragging the main toolbox over into a floating state. From there you can drag out a 2 column width (or more if you desire). But you can NOT dock it back as a now 2 column wide toolbox...it will default back to a 1 column toolbox. This is frustrating!
Now with that said...I have looked at the Tips section of this tutorials page https://learn.corel.com/tips/graphics/customizing-position-menus-menu-commands-tools/and figured out how to drag my most used tools up in the tree and move the less used tools downwards in the tree. This is a work around for me I suppose. But I'd really like the ability to have a two column toolbox and have it be dockable as such! Otherwise, what's the point of customizing the toolboxes if it can't be saved as customized? I also know I can drag these tools into another toolbox of my own creation and dock that somewhere else on screen. I already do this with a customized version of the zoom toolbox to save time with navigation, the pick tool, shape tool and the outline/enhanced view tools amongst another toolbox I created in the lower left corner for toggling guides and alignment guides on/off.
I also realize you can turn tools on and off and on at will also to save space but that really defeats the purpose in my opinion. Really this should be super simple to accomplish. Adobe has the ability to do this in Illustrator no problem. It should be a simple fix for Corel to do in a future update.
Oh and it's also incredibly difficult to drag tools around with the ALT button held down. Unreasonably difficult...have you actually tried doing this yourselves? Good luck (that's sarcasm in case you can't tell)!
As you note, the toolbar can be "two-dimensional" when floated, but is only a single row or column when docked. If that is a limitation of the existing framework that Corel uses for the UI, then I don't know how likely it is to be changed.
If I wanted to "fake" a two-column toolbox using the existing system, then I would create two new toolbars, then copy commands from the regular toolbox over to those two new toolboxes using the Alt-drag-with-Ctrl-to-copy method. Those toolbars could be docked side-by-side in the location where the normal Toolbox usually lives. If I want the Command buttons to line up between the two toolbars, then presence or absence of separators at different positions needs to be the same on both toolbars.
In this screenshot, the toolbar on the far left is the real Toobox. The other two are new toolbars to which content was copied as described earlier.
That has the limitation (or feature!) that the two toolbars are independent of each other.
That's a very interesting workaround Eskimo! Thank you for taking the time to post (including screenshot), I appreciate your assistance. I will consider doing this myself and find your solution quite usable.
I hope Corel themselves can weigh in one day however and see if the toolbox can be resized and docked or not. Just a small tweak but would be helpful.
I have also tried the approach of adding some of my most-used Toolbox items to the Document Desktop context menu. For me, that's a compromise between (1) learning more keyboard shortcuts and (2) flying back to the Toolbox for those tool changes.
VIDEO: Commands on Document Desktop context menu
For some types of work, I can turn off the regular Toolbox completely and get some more screen real estate.
Eskimo, wow, I've also never thought of that approach also! You're really teaching an old dog new tricks here and I really appreciate a fresh set of eyes and you sharing your workflow. I'm convinced...sign me up to your newsletter!
I could tell from your opening post and screenshot that you care about user interface issues! I do, too.
I'm trying to convince them to have one or more non-version-specific forums here on the Community site where stuff like this could better be discussed and shared (and not scattered across umpteen forums). I'm sure that if we compared notes, we would both learn something new.
I see One-shot Pan on one of your custom toolbars. Were you aware that holding the middle mouse button down temporarily activates panning? I've used CorelDRAW for years and years, but only learned that fairly recently.
I totally agree with you on this. It would be a wonderful asset to the community. Sharing tips, tricks and free assets are incredibly valuable and having them in one central sub forum would be awesome! Consider me a supporter. If there was a poll to vote on I'd be behind that 100%
Regarding middle-mouse button panning: I wasn't aware of that also and unfortunately can't seem to get it to work for me but I believe that's due to my mouse being a Logitech mouse and I have the middle mouse button customized to do document or program flipping. I can pan around left and right with the middle scroll wheel though as mine tilts in either direction.
Regarding my zoom toolbar: I have had my zoom toolbar setup that way for years...it's part of my fav-workspace and carry it around with me on a USB key so regardless of where I'm at I can do work the way I am used to. It's funny how reliable you become on customization. If I'm on a workstation and it's default, I can't really function well for a while. I zoom primarily with the mouse wheel centered on an object but once in a while I need to pan around and a one-shot deal works for me. I sometimes use the navigator too (the + sign in the middle of the magnifying glass icon in the bottom right corner where the scroll bars intersect). I love that feature also.
I even have a customized drawing tablet with 8 physical buttons on it that are customized (ESC, Enter, Space, CTRL, Shift, Alt, Delete, F10 [Shape Tool]) and then a row of hotcells (virtual buttons) that deal with other Coreldraw related commands. I use masking tape with fine felt pen to label things. It's just how I've found to be most efficient in my work flow. It looks kind of like a hack but it works for me.
Drew said:Regarding middle-mouse button panning: I wasn't aware of that also and unfortunately can't seem to get it to work for me but I believe that's due to my mouse being a Logitech mouse and I have the middle mouse button customized to do document or program flipping. I can pan around left and right with the middle scroll wheel though as mine tilts in either direction.
On my Logitech mouse (an old G5), the "press-down-the-scroll-wheel" middle mouse button is physically too hard to use comfortably - especially without also doing some unintentional scrolling at the same time.
That mouse also has left- and right-tilt on the scroll wheel. Since I don't use "side scrolling" anywhere, in the Logitech SetPoint software, I've assigned the default behavior of the left-tilt to be "Middle mouse button".
Although that's my default setting for that button, SetPoint also allows things to be mapped based on which application is active. I do only a little bit of that sort of customization, e.g., assigning the two "side buttons" on the mouse to "zoom to page" and "one-shot zoom" for CorelDRAW.