BarIfxFormatQuickStyle QuickStyle is an InstaButton, so it follows the principles of operation of all InstaButtons. The few exceptions that are unique to QuickStyle buttons will be listed below.

 

The QuickStyle dropdown dialog is depicted below.

At the first glance, there's really not much to it: we have the familiar array of Font Attribute controls, accompanied by the somewhat less familiar Font/Charset Priority buttons. We also have something not found in other InstaButtons: a preview that can be zoomed-in if you check the little checkbox under it, and amazingly, even Cancel and Save buttons.

 

The most important feature of this dialog though is the array of checkboxes next to every font attribute. These checkboxes specify which attributes will be applied to the text.

This should become clearer from an example.

 

Imagine we want to emphasize some portions of a long document in a particular way. Say, we want them to appear Bold, Italic, Blue Text on Yellow Background. Whatever other attributes the text may have, we want to leave them unchanged. Font name, Charset, size, among other things. Using ordinary formatting tools would be rather time-consuming: we'd need to select every portion of interest of the text and apply one-by-one the right attributes to it.

 

QuickStyle to the rescue! Let's set it up like so: Bold button depressed and checkbox next to it checked (each checkbox gets automatically checked as soon as you change its corresponding attribute). Same for Italic. Text Color set to Blue (and matching checkbox got checked, right?). Ditto for the Yellow Background Color. All other checkboxes must remain unchecked. What this tells this QuickStyle button is this: "Whatever text you are formatting, apply whatever we selected for the attributes that have a checkbox checked next to them (B, I, both Colors), but leave everything else alone".

 

Click Save to update the QuickStyle – and now you can use the new "tool" you have just created: simply select the text you want and click the QuickStyle button. One click. Four operations.

InstaButtonsQuickStyle1A

 

Another example. Let's say we have some text with a wild assortment of formatting: fonts of all kinds and sizes, some Bold, some Underlined, with some strange colors here and there. Imagine we want to clean things up a bit by removing all Underlining, setting all font sizes to 12 points, and setting text color to Black. Sure, we could achieve what we want one step at a time, but this may quickly get tedious. We'll set up our QuickStyle InstaButton as follows: Underling Off (button up) and corresponding checkbox checked, Font Size 12 and checked checkbox, Text Color set to Black and corresponding checkbox checked. All other checkboxes are left unchecked.

 

Click Save to update the InstaButton with our new setup. The only affected attributes will be those that had checkboxes checked next to them, and what these attributes will be set to is determined by the state of the corresponding control.

InstaButtonsQuickStyle1B

 

Each QuickStyle button attempts to give you as faithful a feedback as it can as to what its setup is. This is reflected in both the preview in the dialog and on the button itself. However, it cannot represent everything. For example how would it show that it is set up to not touch either the Text or the Background Colors? We simply chose two neutral shades of gray. Or how could it differentiate between you setting Underlining to off (U is up and checkbox checked) vs. you just not touching Underlining (U's state doesn't matter and checkbox unchecked)? There simply is no way to correctly represent all possible combinations. So, while a picture may usually be worth 1000 words, in this particular case, you may want to simply review a QuickStyle button's setup by dropping down its dialog.