Tutorial Tuesday: Custom Buttons and Toolbars

If you want to take your productivity in CorelDRAW to a new level, one of the best ways is to customize the program to work exactly as you want. You can do this by customizing the buttons, shortcut keys, menus and much more. Combine this with macros and you can really unleash the power of the program.

Tom Knight has just made available a new video tutorial explaining how to create custom buttons and toolbars in CorelDRAW X4. He'll walk you through the process of customization. This is just one of Tom's many video tutorials on CorelDRAW and Corel PHOTO-PAINT. You can find a complete list of his tutorials and his training products on our site.

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CorelDRAW Developers Explain Custom Add-Ons

Behind any major software project are numerous talented engineers. Most of the time they remain behind the scenes. Recently one of the engineers from the CorelDRAW team posted information about one of the coolest features in CorelDRAW X4. Go ahead and memorize the list of features publicized by the marketing department. Try to figure out which feature we're talking about. Got your answer?

Well, this isn't a feature that has been heavily promoted by Corel and that's really too bad. CorelDRAW X4 allows any developer to create a custom add-on and/or a custom Docker. Prior to CorelDRAW X4, add-on features didn't always mesh completely with the program. By putting the add-on in a custom Docker, there is really no way to tell that the feature wasn't built-in to the product. For novice users, this also make it easier to work with add-ons.

I'll warn you, the information on this feature is a bit technical and is geared towards developers. But I think it is worth reading by all users, even if you never plan on developing your own. It will describe to you what is possible and I'm excited about all the cool new stuff we'll see down the road.

So, follow along as Henrik Wagenaar explains the process of creating a custom add-on and/or a custom Docker. Look carefully and you'll see a cool example of a Docker for custom tables that you can download. If you regularly visit the MacroMonster.com site, you'll know that several cool custom Dockers are already available and Jeff has told me about several more that are in the works. I'll certainly cover some of the best in my Macro Monday posts.

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