In CS3, the Laws of Transparency Have Been Rewritten
In InDesign CS3, you have much better control of Transparency than ever before because you can apply Transparency to the individual parts of an object. So, if you want to lower the Opacity of just the Fill of an object, but not the Stroke, you can do so in the new Effects panel. One thing that many users of InDesign may not know is that some of the laws of Transparency have changed entirely. In InDesign CS 2, if you selected a Group of objects with your Selection tool (V) and lowered their Opacity in the Transparency palette, the Transparency was applied to the Group as a whole, not the individual objects. So, if you Ungrouped them (Object > Ungroup), the individual objects lost any Transparency that had been applied to the Group. Well in CS3, this Transparent Group law has been repealed. If you apply Transparency to a Group, and then Ungroup, the individual objects will still be Transparent.
Tip provided by Jeff Witchel, Certified Adobe® Training Provider.