The Start screen and Recent Files panel

- [Instructor] In this movie, we're going to take a look at a recent addition to Illustrator CC and that's the start screen, which provides you with access to recently opened files. Now, I should mention that from this point on, I'll be recording these movies on the PC. However, as you Macintosh users saw in the previous movie, the experience is the same on both platforms. Alright, so notice that I have just one document open. I'll go ahead and close it by clicking on this X that appears on the right side of the title tab here on the PC.

It appears on the left side of the Mac, but it works the same. And notice as soon as I have no files open, I see the start screen, which by default is listing my recently opened files, starting with he most recent file up here at the top. You can also click on this thumbnail view icon in order to view your illustrations as thumbnails, like so. Now, for some reason one of your documents doesn't show a thumbnail, it's because the file format doesn't support it, as in the case of SVG, or it may be that you haven't opened the document in the most recent version of the software.

And now all I need to do in order to open one of the documents, is click on its icon like so. Alright, I'm going to go ahead and close this file, because I want to show you a couple of more things. Notice these next options right here. They've been in a state of flux lately. So, you'll have to check them out on your own. But currently, if I select CC files, I'll see a list of any files that I've synced to the creative Cloud. And if you want to learn more about that, then just go ahead and click on the Learn More button. In this version of the software, we also have Mobile Creations, which allows you to sync with apps that run on mobile devices, including Illustrator Draw, Photoshop Sketch and Adobe Comp.

And again, you can learn more just by clicking on one of these buttons. Notice we also have New and Open buttons. If you click on Open or press CTRL+O or Command O on a Mac, then Illustrator will bring up the standard Open Dialogue box, which allows you to open any compatible file, whether you've recently opened it or not. I'll just go ahead and cancel out. You can also create a new document by clicking on the New button. And that's going to bring up this revamped New Document dialog box, about which we'll learn more in the very next movie.

But for now, I'll just go ahead and click on Print and then select a letter sized document, and now to create that file, you can either click on the create button in the bottom-right corner of the dialogue box or you can just press the enter key here on the PC or the return key on the Mac, and that will display in this case a single-page document and once again hide the start screen. Now, I imagine many of you will find this start screen to be very helpful. But if for whatever reason it's getting in your way, then you can hide it by going to the Edit menu, this would be the Illustrator menu on the Mac.

Go ahead and drop down to the preferences command, which isn't nearly so far down the menu on the Mac, and then choose General, which has a keyboard shortcut of CTRL+K or Command K on the Mac. Now, initially that shortcut might not make much sense, but here's the way I think of it. This is the first and foremost keyboard shortcut you'll need, which is why it's CTRL+K or Command K on the Mac, the K being for Key. Also worth noting is that the shortcut works the same in Photoshop and in Design.

Alright, so I'll go ahead and choose the command and then notice these two checkboxes right here. Show The Start Workspace When No Documents Are Open and Show The Recent Files Workspace While Opening A File. If you want to hide the start screen, just go ahead and turn this checkbox off. And then for the sake of demonstration, I'll turn the next checkbox on and I'll click OK. And now notice if I close this new document that I no longer see that start screen. But you can still bring it back if you like. By clicking on this workspace option, which by default is set to Essentials, and then choosing Start from the menu, and that's going to temporarily hide the toolbox over on the left-hand side of the screen, as well as the column of panels on the right-hand side, and bring back up the start screen as we're seeing right here, at which point I could once again click on the word Recent and then click on Welcome.ai in order to open up that file.

Alright, now let's say that I want to open a different document, I could go up to the File menu and choose the Open command, again we have that standard keyboard shortcut of CTRL+O or Command O on the Mac. However, because we selected that checkbox, instead of bringing up the standard Open Dialogue box, I've brought up the Recent Files panel instead. And notice we're once again seeing a list of the recently opened files. If you want to see thumbnails instead, just go ahead and click on the thumbnail view icon like so. And if this list doesn't contain any of the files you're looking for, then just go ahead and click on the Open button in order to once again display the standard Open Dialogue box.

Alright, I'm going to go ahead and cancel out. And now you can close this panel either by clicking on the word Close or just pressing the escape key. And so just remember, if you want to switch things around, so that you can see the start screen or the recent files panel, then just press CTRL+K or Command K on the Mac to bring up the Preferences Dialogue box and change these settings as you like. In my case, I'm going to go ahead and turn both of these checkboxes off and then I'll click OK. And that way, if I close the open file, I can still see the toolbox over here on the left-hand side of the screen, as well as this column of panels over on the right.

And that's how you take advantage, or if you prefer, dismiss the new start screen here inside the most recent version of Illustrator CC.