Difference between Expand and Expand Appearance in AI

Hi all

Expand Appearance only shows up after an effect (fx) has been applied to my shape. But I modified my shape by the anchors individually, how do I turn that shape into an expanded shape?

Expand is used to nail down live effects like Warp and Envelope Distort. Before you use Expand the effect is live and can be edited anytime, as can the object the effect is applied to, letting you edit text or modify the objects affected. Expand nails down the effect, making the path match the object’s appearance. After Expand the effect is not longer editable and text is converted to paths.

Expand Appearance is only available is the selection has multiple fills or strokes applied using the Appearance panel. If no multiple fills or strokes have been applied, the command is unavailable and Expand should be available. If multiple fills or strokes have been applied then Expand should be unavailable. I have not kept track to see if there is ever a time one can use either command on a single selection.

The commands really should be combined into one command, since they do the same thing, but depend on whether the Appearance panel has been used. This is example number 879 in the ongoing story of why Illustrator is such a mess. New features have been crammed in with old code and the program needs to be able to support the multiple ways users can do things. I’d bet as experience programmer, asked to document the raw source code for Illustrator, would contemplate suicide.

The program is ancient (24 years old) and an excellent example of how not to update your software. 11 years ago Adobe released InDesign, knowing that continuing to update PageMaker to compete with QuarkXPress was a dead end and that a new program written from scratch was the better way to proceed. Sadly, there is no cross-platform professional vector application directly competing with Illustrator, so Adobe has no incentive to start from scratch and eventually let Illustrator die with dignity. So it stays on life support and we all suffer with a slow, buggy, unintuitive, confusing program.