If you find that the level of detail offered by the Layers palette is beyond the needs of your simple design tasks, you can set the behavior of the Layers palette to match the functionality that existed prior to Illustrator 9. Choose Palette Options from the Layers palette menu and check the Show Layers Only button. This hides all objects from the Layers palette. Additionally, you can turn off layer thumbnails (which will significantly enhance performance). For documents that have lots of layers (like maps, for example), you might also choose the Small option for Row Size. One caveat to these options is that they are document-specific, which means that you need to change these settings for each document.

Turning off layer thumbnail previews in the Palette Options dialog significantly enhances performance in large files.

Choosing the Small option for Row Size in the Palette Options dialog can give you the ability to see far more layers on screen at once and reduce the need to scroll as often.

You can create nested layers by dragging one layer into another layer. You can do the same with groups as well, which makes it easy to organize your artwork even after the art is created. In fact, this method of dragging items within the Layers palette makes it possible to move objects from one group and place them into another group. As you learned earlier in this chapter, groups can have attributes applied to them; this becomes significant because when you’re moving an object into a group that has an attribute applied to it, that object takes on the attributes of the group. The reverse applies as well, so simply moving an object from one layer to another, or into or out of a group can change the appearance of the art in your file.

When you’re dragging layers in the Layers palette, black arrows on the left and right indicate that you’re moving a layer into another layer rather than above or below it.