In QuarkXPress 7 and 8, you can align selected items to a page edge by holding down Shift-Command and pressing the arrow keys. Give it a quick try. (Windows: Shift-Ctrl)
You don’t need to use the Measurements palette for this trick, but you can if you want to:
Jay Nelson is the editorial director of PlanetQuark.com, and the editor and publisher of Design Tools Monthly. He’s also the author of the training videos Quark includes in the box with QuarkXPress 7, and the QuarkXPress 7 training at Lynda.com. In addition, Jay writes for several other publications and speaks at industry events.
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November 20th, 2008 at 11:04 am
Great shortcut, Jay.
Something I’ve found is that it’s a bit misleading that Quark calls it Page Relative Mode. If you change the position of the 0-point of the X and Y coordinates using the rulers, it maps these coordinates as the relative alignment point and not the page itself.
November 20th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
Hey! Isn’t that interesting? Boy, if you move the zero point of the rulers, the feature gets really confused. I noticed that once I’d used the Cmd-Shift-Arrow trick after moving the zero point, subsequent attempts were — confused. It seems to move the item(s) the same distance as the width of the page, resulting in the item moving to the pasteboard. And then once it has moved the item onto the pasteboard, subsequent key presses moves the item relative to the pasteboard.
Of course, since the pasteboard is barely taller than the page, once you’ve aligned an item to the new zero point, it can’t move the item to the bottom of the “page” because that location is below the bottom of the pasteboard — so the keyboard shortcut doesn’t do anything.
I tried it using the buttons on the Measurements palette and got the same results.
It seems that if you move the zero point, this technique must be used carefully. Thanks for pointing it out!