Layer effects and Linked text frames

[Keith.M]

I can not find any way to apply a layer effect across multiple linked text frames.  It seems that you have to select each frame/layer in turn and set up the effects again.  It would be nice in general to be able to copy a layer effect (or set of effects) and apply it to one or more other layers, e.g. via a right-click, but some kind of auto-flow to make effects follow linked frames might be helpful.

[Aammppaa]

Good suggestions!

Some of this functionality is already here, but I am unclear on the recommended workflow, and it seems very under powered!

For simple tasks you can copy any object, and then paste its styling, or just its effects (from the edit menu)

For more complex tasks, you can set up fill / stroke / font / inset / fx etc for a text frame and then create a Style, which can be applied to other frames (or any type of object). But…

• There is no way to update styles!
  Unlike Text Styles (where I can redefine the attributes and they will update all styled text), regular styles can't be changed once created… which IMHO makes them pretty useless!
   
• There is no granularity to styles - it is all or nothing.
  With Text Styles I can create both a Paragraph Style and a Character Style and apply both to a single piece of text.
  With Master Pages I can apply multiple Masters to each page of my document (allowing me to break my design down into smaller simpler chunks).
  
  With Styles I'd like to be able to create multiple Styles (for Drop Shadows, 3D effect, blur etc) and then stack them as needed onto my objects. This way I can easily create a uniform look, with flexibility as one object might be 3D + Blurred, while another is Blurred + Shadow.
   
• Applying a Style to a linked frame requires selecting every frame by hand, which is not practical beyond a handful of linked frames.
  +1 for the ability to apply a Style across all linked frames with a single click.
   
• Auto-flow will honor the styling of the original text frame, but…
  • The styling is not linked, so changes are not propagated.
  • This requires you to have all the styling set up before auto-flowing the text (which is a terrible workflow).