UI improvements for smaller screens and better organisation

[sbe]

I would really love to switch my workflow from Indesign to Publisher. However, when I'm on the road I can't possibly use Publisher practically. All the dialog boxes take up way too much space. Lots of stuff in the top menu bar doesn't show up on my 13 inch Macbook. It all gets very cluttered very quickly. 

No problem at all with Indesign. I really like the possibilities Adobe offers:

1. Fully open palettes (example: Pages view on the left side).
2. Minimization to icon tiles, with the option to get floating windows when opening (example: Colors palette on the right)
3. mix of maximized palettes and minimized buttons + floating windows (example Photoshop)

Bonus: I am able to configure the top context bar in Indesign and hide individual elements that are not relevant to me (and i really like the fast switch on the left side of the context-bar between Text and Paragraph-Settings)

It would really be worth rethinking this, especially in these days when you often have to work with your laptop from your home office and don't have a large external monitor available.

(Sorry for the German UI-examples, but I think everyone can imagine it anyway

[sbe]

Today I found a similar problem, which aims in the same direction. Small 13 inch laptop screen vs. external 4K display:

The problem is also, if you worked first on an external big monitor and then you are mobile on 13", all palettes are way too big and go beyond the window -> you can't grab them anymore, they are locked. The only workaround is to reset the Studio preset. You cannot continue working seamlessly on the project. Or is it a Bug?

[Moon12]

Me too. What is the solution to reduce the palettes?

[MikeTO]

On 2/20/2021 at 9:22 AM, sbe said:

I would really love to switch my workflow from Indesign to Publisher. However, when I'm on the road I can't possibly use Publisher practically. All the dialog boxes take up way too much space. Lots of stuff in the top menu bar doesn't show up on my 13 inch Macbook. It all gets very cluttered very quickly. 

No problem at all with Indesign. I really like the possibilities Adobe offers:

1. Fully open palettes (example: Pages view on the left side).
2. Minimization to icon tiles, with the option to get floating windows when opening (example: Colors palette on the right)
3. mix of maximized palettes and minimized buttons + floating windows (example Photoshop)

Bonus: I am able to configure the top context bar in Indesign and hide individual elements that are not relevant to me (and i really like the fast switch on the left side of the context-bar between Text and Paragraph-Settings)

It would really be worth rethinking this, especially in these days when you often have to work with your laptop from your home office and don't have a large external monitor available.

I know you posted this a long time ago but the thread was just updated so I saw it now. I find Publisher incredibly usable on a 13" screen but it is different than InDesign.

First, you should consider using Tools as a single column (choose Customize Tools). Second, consider hiding it entirely. You'll need it when creating a new document but once you have the template created you can live without it to save screen real estate as long as you master the keyboard shortcuts. Similarly, I keep the Toolbar (top) off entirely to save space.

Here's how I have my screen configured using its default scaled resolution of 1280x800. The left and right panels are set to their minimum possible width. Most days I use just Text Styes on the right panel so I keep Transform and Text Frame collapsed so I can see more styles at once - I have to collapse Transform each time I open Publisher though, those don't stay collapsed. The only thing I don't like about this setup is that Index/Find Replace/Preflight are all wider than Pages so when I change tabs on the left the width of that panel increases. I switch back to Pages immediately after to get the pixels back.

[MikeTO]

On 2/26/2021 at 1:31 AM, sbe said:

Today I found a similar problem, which aims in the same direction. Small 13 inch laptop screen vs. external 4K display:

The problem is also, if you worked first on an external big monitor and then you are mobile on 13", all palettes are way too big and go beyond the window -> you can't grab them anymore, they are locked. The only workaround is to reset the Studio preset. You cannot continue working seamlessly on the project. Or is it a Bug?

This is a different issue but you might try using Studio Presets to create different setups for your small and large displays. I don't have an external monitor right now so I can't test to see whether that would solve your issue but it seems likely.