InDesign Docs

It looks like both InDesign CS3 and InDesign CS4 are compatible with Windows 7. Here's a press release I received this morning:

Adobe today confirmed that Creative Suite 4 and future versions of Creative Suite will run on Windows 7. Adobe has tested its Creative Suite 4 family of products and components on Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate edition and found the performance held up to the company's high standards of quality and performance. Creative Suite 3 has also been tested and will support Windows 7 without any updates. Older versions of the software may run on Windows 7, but they have not been tested for compatibility.

Please visit www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite/faq/ for more details.

This is another addition to the Feature Galleries series. I've provided as many types of bulleted lists and numbered lists as I can think of.

When you need to create a simple list of bulleted or numbered paragraphs, just select the paragraphs and click the Bulleted List or Numbered List button on the Control panel. Alt/Option-click the button to bring up a dialog box that lets you format the list. See the Create bulleted or numbered lists and Format a bulleted or numbered list Help topics.

You may also want to check out the Bullets and Numbering in InDesign CS3 section of the Real World InDesign CS3. (Bullets and numbering hasn't changed since CS3.)

Whenever you need the numbered list to be broken up or intermingled with other paragraphs or list items, define a list style that's part of a paragraph style. For example, in a technical manual, you might want a numbered list for headings that continues across multiple text frames, and you might want to use running captions for images and tables. Define a separate list for each type of numbering.

See the Defining lists Help topic.

You can specify any font glyph to use as a bullet character. See the Change bullet characters Help topic.

Sorry, you can't use placed images as bullets when using the Bulleted Lists feature, unless you can figure out a way to save the image as a glyph in a font. The workaround is to cut and paste the image into the paragraph as an anchored object. See Anchored objects in Help.

This image may give you enough information to line up the periods in a numbered list, but if you need more details, see the Aligning Punctuation in Numbered Lists article.

Creating multi-level lists seems intimidating at first, but it's really not that difficult once you grasp a few key concepts. While the Create multi-level lists Help topic is to generic to be helpful, the blog entry about Numbered Lists - Part II Multi-Level Lists gives more detailed information.

Also, check out this video about Creating an Automatic Numbered List by Gabriel Powell of Instant InDesign.

Read the Numbered Lists - Part I Outlines blog entry to see how to create traditional outlines.

You can learn how to restart numbering automatically after each section head from the Numbered Lists - Part IV Numbered Steps blog entry.

For information on creating running numbering for captions and tables, see the Numbered Lists Part III - Figure Captions blog entry and the Create running captions for figures and tables Help topic.

The bullet or number takes on the formatting of the first character in the paragraph. In this case, one of the bullets is red because the first word is red. To avoid this problem, apply a character style in the Bullets & Numbering dialog box. In this case, the character style would specify a black color. For more information, see the Format a bulleted or numbered list Help topic.

That's it. Let me know if I missed anything.

I don't intend to be very active on this blog for the next few months for double top secret reasons that may or may not have to do with the characters C, S, and 5. I'll focus on short and sweet posts, like this one.

Here's a little tidbit from the Format a bulleted or numbered list Help topic.

When you italicize or bold the first word of a bulleted or numbered list paragraph, the formatting is applied to the number as well, making it inconsistent with the rest of the numbering. Like this:

See how the number 3 is italicized just like the first word? That's ugly. So what's the solution? Apply a character style to the numbering. Here's what it says in Help:

By default, bullets and numbers inherit some of their text formatting from the first character in the paragraph to which they're attached. If the first character in one paragraph is different from the first characters in other paragraphs, the numbering or bullet character may appear inconsistent with the other list items. If this is not the formatting you desire, create a character style for numbers or bullets and apply it to your list by using the Bullets And Numbering dialog box.

Now, back to the fun stuff!

Adobe has an agreement with Adobe Press and Peachpit Press that allows me to request excerpts from books to be published on the web. Once these excerpts are made available, I link to them from the related Help topics. If you can't find the information you need in the Help topic, you may be able to answer your question in these books.

In September 2009, several excerpts from the great InDesign CS4 Real World book were made available.

Here's an updated list:

New white paper can be viewed here. Here's the Introduction:

"As eReader devices like Amazon's Kindle increase in popularity, Adobe InDesign users are asking how to prepare their eBook documents for reading on the Kindle and selling on the Amazon.com Kindle Store. This paper describes how best to accomplish this task. Generally, InDesign users must first export an InDesign document into an EPUB file. Then they must convert it using open source software into the MOBI format to view on a Kindle reading device or to sell on the Amazon.com Kindle Store."

Click here to view the InDesign to Kindle white paper.

This is a long article that's only going to get longer as I find more and more text effects to add to the gallery -- and this is only a small sample of the many ways in which you can manipulate text in InDesign.

To skew the text like this, I selected characters on the left side of the word and applied a negative skew value, and then I selected characters on the right side of the word and applied a positive skew value. See Skew type in InDesign Help.

Here's another buried treasure from the Help files. By default, documents you create with facing pages include a single-page spread to begin the document, like this:

How do you start a document with a two-page spread, like this?

If you try to delete the first page, the other page numbers just move up, and page 2 replaces page 1. The Start a document with a two-page spread Help topic gives the answer:

Start a document with a two-page spread

Instead of beginning the document with a right-facing (recto) page, you can delete the first page and begin your document with a left-facing (verso) page that's part of a spread.

Important: Because of the settings that make it necessary to keep a left-facing page as the starting page, it can be difficult to insert spreads into a document when following this method. To avoid this difficulty, it is best to work in the document with a right-facing page starting page (which should be left blank). When you have inserted all of the pages needed in the document, delete the first page by following the steps below.
Make sure page 1 of the document is blank.

1. Choose File > Document Setup. Be sure the document contains at least three pages and that the Facing Pages option is selected. Click OK.

2 In the Pages panel, select all the pages except page 1. (The easiest way to do this is to select page 2 and then Shift-select the last page of the document.)

3. In the Pages panel menu, deselect Allow Selected Spread To Shuffle.
Select page 1. In the Pages panel menu, choose Delete Spread.

TIP: To add a spread to a document that starts on a left-facing page, first make sure Allow Selected Spread To Shuffle is deselected and Allow Document Pages To Shuffle is selected. Then, insert three pages, and delete the extra page.

It's show and tell time. I'll show you pictures of tabs and indents, and I'll tell you how to create the effect. Or, at least I'll point you to the Help topic that tells you how to do it.

When you press the Tab key, the insertion point moves to the next tab setting. If you haven't manually entered any tab settings, default tab settings appear every 3p. These tab settings don't appear on the Tabs ruler.

1. Choose Type > Tabs to display the Tabs ruler (also called the Tabs dialog box).
2. Click above the ruler where you want the tab setting to appear.
3. On the left side of the Tabs ruler, click to indicate which type of setting you want (Left, Center, Right, or Decimal).

See the Tabs and indents Help topic.

"How do I align the periods in a bulleted lists?" I've seen a variation of this question asked repeatedly in user forums. Here's an example of one such forum thread.

See how the periods don't line up after the numbers? The simple answer is to use right alignment and increase the First Line Indent value by increments until the numbering is aligned.

Here are the detailed steps:

1. Select the numbered paragraphs.

2. Alt/Option-click the Numbered List button in the Control panel.

3. In the Bullets & Numbering dialog box, select Preview.

4. Choose Right from the Alignment menu.

5. Increase the Left Indent value to create a buffer.

6. Increase the First Line Indent value gradually until the periods are aligned.

Of course, if your numbering goes past 100, you'll have to add even more space. This same method works when you're editing a paragraph style that uses numbering.

Are you going to MAX?

Join Adobe reps for snacks, drinks, and a sneak peek at the version of Community Help that will make its debut in InDesign CS5. We'd love to get your feedback on the all-new AIR interface and exciting new features.

The sessions will be held, at MAX, at these times:
• Monday 10/5/09 11:30 am - 1 pm
• Tuesday 10/6/09 4:30 pm - 6 pm

Please contact Tanya Knoop at tknoop@adobe.com if you think you can make either of these sessions. Tanya will send you details.

If you're a Mac user and you've upgrading or are thinking about upgrading to the new version of Mac OS X 10.6 (called Snow Leopard), you may run across a few issues, which are not specific to Adobe products

Applications crash when saving to file servers through SMB protocol (Mac OS X 10.6)

Files may not open in original authoring application (Mac OS X 10.6)

Firefox 3.x crashes when trying to use the Adobe Downloader (Mac OS X 10.6)

Acrobat 9 "Save As Adobe PDF" Support in Mac OS X Snow Leopard (v10.6)

(For more details on this PDF issue, see Steve Werner's article: Acrobat's Adobe PDF Printer Replaced in Snow Leopard)

Here's the Snow Leopard FAQ.

Check out this AIR application that lets you search and browse keyboard shortcuts in any Creative Suite product.

Adobe Shortcut App for Creative Suite

Here's what it looks like:

This application contains a database of all of the keyboard shortcuts for all of the applications in Creative Suite 4.

To see all of the shortcuts, be sure to click "All Categories." The default "Essentials" view shows only a small subset.

The information appears to be taken from the "Keyboard shortcuts" section of each product's Help. If you want to search for keyboard shortcuts in InDesign CS4 Help, you can do that, too.

For information on editing keyboard shortcuts and printing a complete list of shortcuts, including custom shortcuts, see the Use keyboard shortcut sets Help topic.

Also see Mike Witherell's handy Keyboard shortcuts for Adobe Creative Suite 4.

We recently did a usability study on page numbering in InDesign. Participants worked through a series of page numbering tasks that I asked them to perform. Although I made a few changes to a couple of Help topics, I kept thinking that what people really needed was pictures of page numbering effects and brief descriptions of how to create those effects. So that's what I'm doing here. Perhaps later, I'll clean up the pictures and add this to Help.

Adding page numbering isn't the most intuitive task in InDesign. You basically create a text frame on a master page and insert the Current Page Number marker (choose Type > Insert Special Character > Markers > Current Page Number). If your document has facing pages, remember to add page number markers to both master pages. See Add basic page numbering in Help.

I haven't blogged much in the last month or two, and I probably won't be blogging much over the next several months. If someone asks me whether I'm busy working on the next version of InDesign, I would say, "That information is confidential." By the way, InDesign CS5 has some cool new features. You know, in theory.

I am, however, tweeting on twitter. When I run across a good link or need to make a quick announcement, I'll tweet about it. And then, at the end of the month, I'll combine many of the tweets into a "Best Links" blog entry.

Here's my twitter page:

http://twitter.com/indesigndocs/

(Yes, that is a picture of me from last year, about a week before I shaved my head.)

A number of web sites serve as an excellent resource for InDesign. At the top of the list is InDesign Secrets, and places like Instant InDesign, Creative Mentor, Jetsetcom.net, and Gilbert Consulting offer tons of tips, tricks, and tutorials.

In the comments section of individual Help topics, I link to specific articles on these web sites. In some instances, I linked to these "community sites" within Help topics, and I plan to do more of that.

The Community Publishing System (CPS) is another resource for contributing to the InDesign community. Perhaps you don't have your own web site but would like to make contributions. Or perhaps you've started an InDesign website and would like to let more people know about it. You can use the CPS to help other Adobe users.

Here's what the CPS folks have to say about it:

We're pleased to announce the Adobe Community Publishing 1.1 beta is live. This new AIR application lets anyone with an Adobe ID publish content on Adobe products and technology directly to Adobe.com.

Community members can contribute tips, movies, code snippets, and more with easy-to-use templates. Contributions are moderated by community experts. Plus, everyone in the community can rate and comment on contributions.

Contributing is easy
1. Download the Community Publishing app: Community Publishing System (CPS)
2. Author your tip using a simple template
3. Publish it to Adobe.com

Content goes live within minutes and is automatically added to community help search. Exceptional contributions will be promoted in Help & Support pages, Developer Connection, Design Center, and considered for inclusion in Adobe partner publications.

You can see all of the submissions here: Community Publishing index page.

So, take it for a spin. I'll be keeping an eye on the submissions for InDesign and including links to the especially good stuff when I update the InDesign Help document.

I updated a number of topics based on feedback, and uploaded the new version of InDesign Help. I also added three new topics, which I need to link to so that they show up in search results.

Fixing low-resolution images - This topic addresses several reasons that images can appear pixelated or fuzzy when placed in InDesign. These various issues are addressed in several different topics, but I wanted to gather them into a single topic.

Apply colors to grayscale images - Again, several topics allude to applying colors to imported grayscale or bitmap images, but it's a common task that should be addressed in its own topic.

Troubleshooting booklet printing - This issue addresses the most common problems people have when they're using Print Booklet. If you're aware of any other issues, leave a comment.

Have you ever wanted to create page numbering (such as "Pages 4-5") on one page of the spread? Me, neither. But there must be some trendy new design style that puts both spread numbers on a single page. That's the only way I can account for the number of times this issue has come up in the forums.

The good news is that it's relatively easy to do in InDesign. The bad news is that a bug prevents it from working smoothly. The good news is that there's a fairly simple workaround. If you're keeping score at home, that's Good-2, Bad-1.

Here's how to create this quirky page numbering technique.

Step 1. In the Pages panel, open the master page where you want to add the page numbering, and create a text frame. In my case, I'm putting the numbering on the right master. Type any text that'll go along with the page numbering, and format the text.

For example, you may want to use a paragraph style that right-aligns the text and applies a font style used for headers.

Step 2. Choose Type > Insert Special Characters > Markers > Previous Page Number to insert the page number from the left-hand page. Insert a hyphen (or en dash), and then choose Type > Insert Special Characters > Markers > Current Page Number.

Of course, if you're adding the page numbering to the left master, you'll want to insert the current page number first and then insert the Next Page Number character after the hyphen.

In a perfect world, you'd be done. But there's a catch -- and we haven't even gotten to the real bug yet. You have to thread the text frame on the right-hand page to a text frame on the left-hand page. You need to do this because the Previous Page Number and Next Page Number work on a story level, not on a document level.

Step 3. Create a text frame on the left master page, and thread it to the text frame on the right master page (click the out port, and then click the other text frame). Then place the insertion point at the beginning of the text that belongs in the next frame and choose Type > Insert Break Character > Frame Break.

It should work, right? Wrong. If you go to a document page to which the master is applied, you'll see the Previous Page Number is the same as the Current Page Number.

Here's where the bug enters the picture. For some reason, InDesign stumbles on the Previous Page Number if it's in a text frame that's based on a master page. Until this bug gets fixed, you need to override the master page item on every page where it appears. Ouch. The program team is aware of this bug, and I'm hoping it gets fixed by the end of summer.

Step 4. On each document page to which the master is applied, hold down Ctrl/Command+Shift and click the text frame with the page numbering.

Now that I've written out the steps, I think a more accurate score is Good-2, Bad-2. I'll revise this when the bug gets fixed.

In the Creating contact sheets help topic, I mention how to place multiple graphics into a grid. It's a pretty neat trick, especially if you use the modifier keys to change the number of rows and columns as well as the spacing between the images.

You can also create a simple contact sheet in InDesign by placing multiple images in a grid.

1. Choose File > Place, select multiple images, and choose Open.

2. Hold down Ctrl+Shift (Windows) or Command+Shift (Mac OS) and click or drag.

3. While still dragging, release the other modifier keys and press the arrow keys to determine the number of rows and columns. Use the Up Arrow and Down Arrow keys to change the number of rows and the Left and Right arrow keys to change the number of columns. To change the spacing between frames, use the Page Up and Page Down keys or hold down Shift while pressing the arrow keys.

4. Release the mouse button to place the grid of images.

Even though the images may have different sizes, the frames in the grid are the same size. Use the Object > Fitting commands to fit the images within the frame. If images need to be moved within the frame, use the Direct Selection tool to select and move the image.

Here are a few of the best tutorials and articles that came out in May.

InDesign Eye Candy

Need inspiration for using transparency effects? Check out Mike Rankin's excellent three-part series: Part I, Part II, and Part III. The folks at InDesign Secrets continue to amaze.

Using Camera Raw with InDesign

Can you use Camera Raw photos in InDesign? Watch this tutorial by Layers Magazine and find out. While you're at it, check out these other Layers Magazine tutorials.

InDesign Snippets

Neil Oliver at Creative Mentor has created a bunch of excellent videos, including this one about using snippets.

Tools and Their Modifier Keys (PDF)

Mike Witherell creates excellent PDF cheat sheets for InDesign, including this one that describes all the tools, their shortcuts, and how modifier keys affect the tools.

New Acrobat.com presentations

Keith Gilbert points out the new Acrobat.com slide presentation beta software that you can play around with.

InDesign and Acrobat Forms

I already mentioned Gabriel Powell's excellent new video on creating forms in InDesign and Acrobat, but it doesn't hurt to mention it again.

Style Mapping Presets Bug

InDesign news isn't always cheerful. Michael Murphy mentions a nasty bug that prevents style mappings from being remembered in saved presets. The InDesign team is working on a fix. Michael also uncovered a hidden GREP feature in this article.

By the way, take a look at Michael's book, Adobe InDesign CS4 Styles. It's one of my favorite InDesign books.

InCopy CS4 Hands-On Guide

Anne-Marie includes hands-on exercises and sample files to help you learn the InDesign/InCopy workflow.

100 Wicked Tips

These tips cover all the Creative Suite apps. Michael Ninness wrote the InDesign section.

Multitouch Now

"Panning and zooming are key parts of any creative workflow, but alone would be pretty inefficient when navigating through multi-page documents. In InDesign, in addition to the pan and zoom gestures, you can use the three-finger swipe gesture to quickly go to the previous or next page. Here's another gesture you can use on pages: the rotate gesture can turn the current spread 90 degrees, so you can flip between landscape and portrait orientations. If you have an object selected, meanwhile, the rotate gesture will instead act upon that object, enabling you to rotate it with fine control."

Working with Indents, Tabs, and Text Wrap in InDesign CS4

Terry White's video is a good getting started resource for anyone working with indents, tabs, and -- you guessed it -- text wrap.

By the way, here's a good collection of InDesign resources: 15 Great Resources for Learning InDesign. The author mentioned a couple of resources that I wasn't aware of.

When so many users complained about not having a way to save backwards from InDesign CS4 to InDesign CS2, I offered to convert files. Many people have taken me up on this offer. As a result, I've been able to see documents people have been working on. Many of the designs have been great, but I've seen some sloppy practices. The most egregious error is not using styles for formatting text and objects. I'll write more on that later.

I also noticed a few common typing errors that should be avoided.

1. Use hyphens, em dashes, and en dashes properly.

A hyphen divides a compound word, such as "post-Colonial."

An em dash indicates a break in thought—what was I talking about? (Unfortunately, my blogging tool shortens em dashes, so you'll just have to imagine a longer dash.) An em dash is also used to indicate an open end date, such as "Peter Baxter-McGill [1964—]" or an open-end date, such as "19—." There's no reason to create a dash using two hyphens (--) in InDesign.

An en dash is used to indicate a range of numbers, such as "35–44." It also indicates a link between geographic references and routes, such as the Mason–Dixon Line and Oakland–San Francisco. It's also used for joint authors, such as "Kvern–Blatner" and for the minus sign. (Unfortunately, it looks like my blogging tool converts en dashes into hyphens. Oh well.)

Some people prefer using the en dash – instead of the em dash – in the middle of a sentence because it looks better than the em dash. If you take this approach, make sure you add a nonbreaking space (Type > Insert White Space > Nonbreaking Space) before the en dash so that the dash doesn't start a line.

2. Use discretionary hyphens to break words.

If you don't like the way InDesign composes text and decide to break up a word with a hyphen, use a discretionary hyphen (Type > Insert Special Character > Hyphens and Dashes > Discretionary Hyphen). A discretionary hyphen is also known as a "soft hyphen" or "optional hyphen." It's visible only if it breaks the word at the end of a line. If you just add a hyphen, you may end up with "Spam- alot" in the middle of a line.

3. Use quotation marks and prime marks correctly.

Use straight quotation marks (" ") when you're typing code. The rest of the time use curly quotation marks. In InDesign, you can change a preference setting to determine which quotation marks are used. You can read more about it in the Use quotation marks Help topic.

Use the prime mark (′) to indicate feet, arcminutes, or minutes of time. It looks like a slanted apostrophe. Use the double prime mark (″) to indicate inches, arcseconds, or seconds of time. Some fonts include the prime and double prime marks. Use the Glyphs panel to insert these marks. If the font doesn’t have a prime or double prime mark, insert the straight quotation mark, and italicize it.

4. Use Space After and Space Before instead of paragraph returns.

Novice InDesign users control paragraph spacing using the Enter key. This frequently causes problems, especially with blank lines at the top of a frame. The better approach is to control paragraph spacing with paragraph styles. The Space Before and Space After settings are found in the Indents and Spacing section. You can also use the Control panel to change Space Before and Space After values of individual paragraphs.

5. Watch for widows and orphans.

A widow is the last line of a paragraph that winds up all by itself at the top of a column or page. An orphan is the first line of a paragraph that lands all by itself at the bottom of a column or page. Designers sometimes also refer to the single-word last line of a paragraph as either a widow or an orphan. Some people call this a "runt."

InDesign offers several methods to avoid widows and orphans. See the Ways to control paragraph breaks and Control paragraph breaks using Keep options Help topics.

Did I miss anything?

For another edition of my Buried Treasure series, here's a tip found in the Help topic, Index a word, phrase, or list quickly. This topic describes how to index names quickly in the Last Name, First Name format. To index a proper name quickly by last name, select the name and press Shift+Alt+Ctrl+] (Windows) or Shift+Option+Command+] (Mac OS).

This works well for names like Arthur Mays (Mays, Arthur) and Harriet R. Smith (Smith, Harriet R.). But what about names like Edgar de la Peña, Thurston B. Howell III, Floyd Airweather Jr.? You'd have an index that looks like this:

III, Thurston B. Howell
Jr., Floyd Airweather
Peña, Edgar de la

Here's where the buried treasure comes in.

To index compound last names or names with a title, include one or more nonbreaking spaces between the words. For example, if you want to index “James Paul Carter Jr.” by “Carter” instead of “Jr.”, place a nonbreaking space between “Carter” and “Jr.” (To insert a nonbreaking space, choose Type > Insert White Space > Nonbreaking Space.)

If you add nonbreaking spaces (also called "hard spaces") between the "real" last name and all the words that come after it, the generated index won't have the bad sorting problems:

Airweather Jr., Floyd
de la Peña, Edgar
Howell III, Thurston B.

For another edition of my Buried Treasures series, here's a note found in the Help topic, Align or justify text vertically within a text frame.

Vertical justification isn’t applied to text that takes on a non-rectangular shape due to influences such as text frame shape, text wrap, or corner effects. In these cases, top alignment is applied. When a corner effect is applied, vertical justification is possible if you make the text area rectangular by increasing the Inset value in the Text Frame Options dialog box, relative to the Size value in the Corner Options dialog box.

In other words, vertical justification and corner effects don't play nicely with each other in InDesign CS4. One workaround, as described in the Help topic, is to increase the inset value in the Text Frame Options dialog box (Ctrl+B/Command+B) so that it's at least as large as the corner effect value. In the example below, I justified the text within the text frame, and then I added a 2p corner effect, and then I added a 2p inset.

That's one option, which works perfectly well if you don't mind changing the inset value. If you want your inset value to be smaller, the best approach is to use two frames of the same size. Apply the vertical aliignment to the text in one frame, and apply the corner effect to the other frame, and then stack and group the two frames.

We asked Gabriel Powell to create a video that addresses the workflow of starting a form in InDesign and completing it in Acrobat. He did an excellent job.

Click here to watch Gabriel Powell's video

As the Creating PDF forms topic suggests, the gist of the workflow is that you design a form in InDesign that includes placeholders for fields such as radio buttons, check boxes, and text fields. Then you export to PDF and use Acrobat to convert the placeholders into form fields.

This isn't a perfect workflow. Ideally, you should be able to add form fields in InDesign so that exporting to PDF results in a finished form. Instead, you end up with two master documents, which means that if you need to make any changes in InDesign, you'd have to redo all the form field recognition work in Acrobat.* Still, if you make the right decisions and create a clean InDesign document, it's a good way to make data forms.

As we were putting together the plan for this video, I came across a detailed document from the Acrobat team that provides valuable technical details on field recognition and best practices for designing a form. View Notes on Form Field Recognition (PDF).

UPDATE: See also Michael Murphy's videocast on designing PDF forms in InDesign:

* Kriss has an interesting workaround tip in comments. Basically, you can use the Replace Pages feature in Acrobat to swap in an edited InDesign page without losing the buttons. Bob Levine describes the process in detail in this InDesign Secrets post.

More new topics added to InDesign Help.

Create calendars and business cards from templates - "Calendar" is a popular search term, so I wanted to add a Help topic that points users to the community sites where they can find templates for creating calendars, business cards, resumes, flyers, and other specialized documents. Please leave a comment in that topic if you're aware of good InDesign template sites.

Determine the word count - I had documented how to determine word counts and character counts, but searches for "word counts" haven't been bringing up the right Help topics. So I added this little topic to make it more explicit and improve the search experience.

Editing hyperlinks imported from Word - Several people have asked questions in the user forum about how to avoid getting the white boxes around hyperlinks in imported documents. I wrote this topic to address that issue.

Page transitions - This isn't actually a new topic. In fact, I removed a topic that explained the two methods for adding page transitions. In usability testing, the additional information confused users. I simplified the topic by removing the steps on using the Page Transitions dialog box. It's just as well, since that dialog box is redundant with the Page Transitions panel.

Dynamic web documents for Flash - To unclutter the Help topic on exporting interactive documents to Flash, I broke the old topic out into three new topics: Create interactive SWF (Flash) files for the web, Create interactive XFL (Flash) for the web, and Flash export issues. I also edited a topic called Exporting content to the web to provide links and a better overview of different ways to export InDesign content to the web.

Create arrows using start and end shapes - This topic hasn't been coming up when people search for "arrows" or "arrowheads." Let's hope it does now so people can see how easy it is to create arrows in InDesign.

Create button hot spots - I converted a couple of blog entries into Help topics: Display a hidden image on rollover and Display a different button on rollover. I also changed the title of the Add button states for rollover effects topic.

Unable to select objects - Troubleshooting topic.

Finally, in the Insert straight quotation marks topic, I provided a tip on adding prime and double-prime glyphs.

Got all that, Google?

InDesign Secrets just did a post on typing tabs in a table cell. It's a good tip that reminded me of a series I've been wanting to do called "Buried Treasures" in which I extract tips from Help topics and highlight them in this blog. I'll start with this little topic called Insert tabs into a table cell:

Insert tabs into a table cell

When the insertion point is in a table, pressing Tab moves the insertion point to the next cell. However, you can insert a tab within a table cell. Use the Tabs panel to define tab settings in the table. Tab settings affect the paragraph in which the insertion point is placed.

1. Using the Type tool , place the insertion point where you want to insert a tab.
2. Choose Type > Insert Special Character > Other > Tab.
3. To change tab settings, select the columns or cells you want to affect, choose Type > Tabs to display the Tabs panel, and then adjust tab settings.

Note: When you use the Tabs ruler to apply a decimal tab to a cell or group of cells, you usually don’t need to press Tab at the beginning of each paragraph to decimal-align the text in the cells. Paragraphs are automatically aligned on the decimal character, unless the paragraph contains additional formatting, such as center alignment, that overrides the decimal tab.

On a Mac, you can press Option-Tab. In Windows, you need to assign a keystroke.

You may wonder why we don't provide keyboard shortcuts in Adobe Help topics. It turns out that scattered keyboard shortcuts give our international friends fits when they're translating the Help topics, especially for languages that use different keyboards. To save time and money, we keep all of our shortcuts listed in the Default keyboard shortcuts topic.

To number steps in a document, you can keep it simple by just clicking the Numbered List button in the Control panel to number the current paragraph. And when you want to restart numbering for a new set of steps, just Alt/Option-click the Numbered List button and change the Start At number to 1. That may be a fine approach if you have only one or two sets of steps, but if you have more, you'll want to automate your layout with styles.

Let's suppose your text layout looks something like this:

What's the best way to restart numbering?

The numbering needs to be restarted after the "To insert a gadget" head step. One way to do this is to create two different styles for steps, such as "Steps Begin" and "Steps Continue." That's a perfectly fine approach. But in this document, we know that steps appear only after a "Head Step" style, so let's take advantage of that.

I've already covered how to create numbered lists for outlines and multi-level lists. Now I'm going to walk through the steps of adding figure numbers, such as "Figure 1-1," "Figure 1-2," and so on. Using sequential numbering for lists of figures is common in technical manuals and user guides. I actually did a fairly thorough job in the Creating running captions for figures and tables Help topic if I don't say so myself, but it may be helpful to demonstrate this process with a specific type of caption list.

Running caption for figures

In Part I, I covered how to create a traditional outline list. Now I'm going to walk through the steps of creating a multi-level list frequently used in academic papers, user guides, and military documents.

When I wrote the InDesign Help topic on creating multi-level lists, I wasn't able to go into the detail that I wanted to. Sure, a person can use the steps to figure out how to create multi-level lists, but without concrete examples, it's not exactly easy. So I'm going to walk through the steps of different multi-level numbered lists. First, I'll show how to create a simple outline in InDesign:

Whenever I create new Help topics, I need to link to them from an external source like this blog to get search engines to recognize them.

New Topics

Add basic page numbering - When different search terms such as "page numbers" and "page numbering" are combined, this subject is the number one search in InDesign. Based on feedback I've been receiving, it appears that some novice users are having a difficult time finding the information they need. The problem is that information on page numbers is intertwined with more advanced pagination tasks. So I created a "basic" topic for novice users and added links to more advanced topics. I think this is a better approach. Now I just need to make this new topic popular enough to appear near the top of search results. (Hey, if you have a blog, please find an excuse to link to this topic.)

Removing white box effect in documents with transparency - In this case, I needed to break the record for the longest Help topic title. Also, this issue has been reported in forums, and it makes sense for it to appear more explicitly in Help. David Blatner wrote about eliminating the white box effect on the InDesign Secrets site.

Adding SWF files in InDesign - QuickTime is required to play videos in PDF documents exported from InDesign CS4. Unfortunately, QuickTime doesn't play SWF files as well as it used to. This new Help topic briefly covers problems associated with adding SWF files to InDesign documents, and recommends adding the SWF files in Acrobat 9, which uses Adobe's built-in Flash Player to play SWF files.

Other Housecleaning

These Help topics should appear higher than related Help topics in search results: Preflight panel overview, Adding transparency effects, Tabs and indents, Add basic page numbering (it can't hurt to link to it twice, right?), Hyphenate text, Check spelling, Change document setup, margins, and columns, Gradients, Layers, and Create masters.

Legacy Adobe and Macromedia forums have been integrated onto a single platform at http://forums.adobe.com.

Highlights

* Rich text options: inline images and videos, file attachments, code samples

* Integration of Adobe ID for true single sign on to all Forums

* Consolidation of Macromedia and Adobe Forums onto one new system.

* Updated look and feel, more consistent with other forum systems

* Email participation, including starting a new discussion and alerts

* RSS feeds for many parts of the forum (topics, users, announcements, etc.)

* Improved moderation capabilities (hosts can delete inappropriate content)

* Improved search capabilities, including wildcard searches and fuzzy searches

Adobe Forums FAQ

Have more questions? See the Adobe Forums FAQ.

Click this link to get a list of video tutorials for InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat, Flash, Dreamweaver, Bridge, and all the other products that appear in the Design, Web, and Production Studio versions of the Creative Suite.

Before you click the link, here's a tip. The best way to view the videos for each product is to click the "Episode List" next to the product. If you click the "Learn" link, such as "Learn InDesign CS4," you end up going to a different index in AdobeTV. AdobeTV is great for viewing videos, but it's still a work-in-progress in terms of navigation and searching. (How's that for diplomacy?) OK, now we're ready to click the link:

Adobe Creative Suite 4 Video Tutorials

Speaking of videos, I recently became aware of a cool site called Creative Mentor by Neil Oliver. It combines articles with accompanying videos that cover a wide range of InDesign topics. Neil left several comments in InDesign Help topics such as Import swatches, Preflight panel overview, and Setting preferences in which he linked to a related article on his site. I checked out his site and added it to the Google Custom Search Engine so that his articles appear when you include community sites in InDesign Help searches.

Reminder - If you're aware of a good InDesign site or article that you or someone else has created, please leave a comment in a related Help topic. It promotes the best sites, and it helps other people get their questions answered. Oh, and that goes for appropriate forum threads and articles in popular sites like InDesign Secrets that every InDesign user should check in on regularly. Add links through commenting in Help.

Whenever people ask if they can create endnotes in InDesign, I have to explain the same sad story. No, InDesign has footnotes not endnotes, but you can download a plug-in . . . Now, thanks to Peter Gold's comment in the InDesign user forum, I have a much better answer. While InDesign still doesn't have an Endnotes feature, it's easy to create endnotes in InDesign CS4 by using cross-references.

English
Adobe and its partners provide a basic set of video tutorials on the Adobe website, in addition to excellent tutorials provided by other members of the community. Many sections of InDesign Help refer to additional video tutorials in context to provide information about specific features. If you know of an excellent video tutorial or other resource about InDesign, please leave a comment at the bottom of the relevant page of InDesign Help on the Web to tell others about it.

Here's another housecleaning entry that helps Google recognize a few new topics in Help.

Creating PDF forms - This topic includes the bare steps for designing forms in InDesign that can be converted into electronic PDF forms in Acrobat. In a few weeks, after Gabriel Powell finishes his video on this subject, I'll have more to say about this subject.

Running sample scripts - This new topic provides a brief description of all the sample scripts that ship with InDesign CS4. Some of these scripts may help you in your everyday tasks.

I also noticed that the Check spelling topic needs to be promoted in search results. It's a better starting point than that other topic, which I won't mention because Google is watching.

I edited the Create contact sheets topic to clarify the fact that you need to release the buttons before using the arrow keys to change the number of rows and columns. But I forgot to mention that you can press Shift with the arrow keys to change the space between the images being placed. That little nugget will have to wait until Help is updated again in a couple of weeks.

Finally, I added tips to and clarified several topics based on comments I received. Again, if you have a suggestion for improving a Help topic, please leave a comment.

One of the big new features in InDesign CS4 is the ability to export InDesign documents to SWF format. When played in Adobe Flash Player or a web browser, SWF files look like slideshows, or flip books. SWF files are similar to interactive PDF files that include hyperlinks, page transitions, and navigation buttons. One difference is that SWF files include the whiz-bang page curl feature.

Tomasz Kuczborski created this sample SWF flip book. You can open it and play with the page curl feature. Just drag any corner of the page to turn it. Check it out:

Click here to view the sample file. You can also right-click the link and choose to download it.

When the InDesign programmers revamped the interactivity features in CS4 to include cross-references, they made a subtle change that requires every bookmark to have a text anchor attribute. This change has caused some confusion in at least two areas -- linking buttons to pages, and automatically generating bookmarks for a PDF document. Here are the problems and workarounds in both instances.

The Adobe InDesign CS4 Conversion Guide is now available. It includes chapters on the "Top 10 Differences You Need to Understand," the "Top 25 Shortcuts You Should Know," and more handy reference material.

For additional QuarkXPress resources, see the Help topic on opening QuarkXPress documents in InDesign.

I added a couple of new topics to InDesign Help.

What to do if InDesign freezes

Common InDesign error messages

At Adobe, I'm responsible for documenting features in various products. Other people at Adobe write tech notes for error messages and installation problems. However, I've noticed that several people search Help to find installation and error message solutions.

So I thought I might help those people by directing them to the appropriate tech note that addresses the issue.

If you're aware of an error message that's not in that topic and should be, please leave a comment either here or in the error messages topic. I'll add the error message to the list and link to the relevant tech note. And if no tech note exists for the error, I'll contact Matt to see if he can create one.

Being able to save backwards multiple versions has been an ongoing frustration for some InDesign users, especially those who don't upgrade with each version. The process for opening a CS4 document in CS3 is fairly straightforward. Export the CS4 document to INX format, and then open the INX file in the updated version of InDesign CS3.

We made some big changes to the CS4 Help experience from previous versions of the suite. First, Help is now on the web (there is a stripped down version of Help on your hard drive, but that appears only if you're not connected to the web). Second, the default page that appears when you choose Help > InDesign Help is the Help and Support page, not the main InDesign Help page. Third, searches in Help can include community content.

As I've been looking at survey results and getting feedback from customers, it's clear to me that a lot of people aren't happy with all of these changes. While we have some major improvements to Help coming down the pike for the next version, there is only so much we can change for CS4. Here's what I recommend to make the current Help experience more productive.

I just recently learned about a great InDesign website over at jetsetcom.net. Check out this page in particular. It includes free downloadable PDFs that act as quick resource guides for keyboard shortcuts, hidden characters, preferences and presets, GREP metacharacters, and more.

Here's how I found out about this resource. One of the site's owners, Michael Witherell, added comments in various Help topics. Each comment includes a link to one of the related PDFs. For example, he added links to the Keyboard shortcuts topic, to the Working with markers topic, to the Metacharacters for searching topic, and to a few more.

These comments work to everyone's advantage. If people can't find the information they're looking for in Help, they may find what they're looking for in these comments. And Michael can get more people looking at his website. Quid pro quo, Doctor Lecter.

When I saw what great information was on this website, I added it to the custom search engine so that his web site will appear in the community search results.

We would love for you to use comments to show off, advertise your content, and promote yourself by sharing useful answers, links, and content with InDesign users. If you wrote a tutorial about InDesign, point to it. If you watched someone else's video tutorial about InDesign and thought that it was good, point to it. If you think you can explain something better than we/I did, then add a comment.

When I have to go back and work in InDesign CS3 for testing purposes, I miss the big new CS4 features like cross-references, Flash export, and Live Preflight. But I may miss these little features even more.

1. Dragging to place an image

When I place a file, I no longer need to click and then rescale the large frame that often extends beyond the view. Instead, I can drag the place gun (ahem -- loaded graphics cursor), and the frame and image are scaled automatically.

2. Smart guides

Perhaps this should be considered a major new feature. Regardless, I love the hints that appear when I'm creating, moving, and transforming objects. Why, yes, I would like the rectangle to the same size as that other rectangle -- thank you for asking!

While I have never wanted to turn off smart guides, I realize that some people want to. You can turn off the Smart Guide options in the Guides & Pasteboard section of the Preferences dialog box. And if you don't want tooltip-like feedback to appear when you're scaling or resizing, turn off Show Transformation Values in the Interface section of Preferences. Help topic for smart guides is here.

In Part I, I described how to create a simple hot spot, or hot link, in which holding the mouse pointer over an area displays a pop-up image. Now I'll describe how to create a clickable hot spot -- one that requires the user to click an area to display an image.

The steps for doing this are different in InDesign CS3 and CS4. Keith Gilbert described how to build PDF tooltips (PDF) in InDesign CS3.

Creating a Clickable Hot Spot (CS4)

We're going to use the Show/Hide Button action to display the hidden button when we click. (If you're familar with creating buttons in Acrobat, "Show/Hide Button" in InDesign is the same as "Show/Hide a Field" in Acrobat.) To create a hot spot that appears when you click, we'll need to create two separate buttons -- one to define the hot spot area and the other to appear when the hot spot area is clicked.

1. Use the Rectangle tool to drag a box over the area you want to define as the hot spot.

In my example, I created a box over the Paris area on the stunningly beautiful map of France.

2. Turn the rectangle object into a button. To do this, select the object, and then either click the [Normal] state in the Buttons panel, or choose Object > Interactive > Convert to Button.

Here's another "Bonus Documentation" entry in which I flesh out a task that falls outside the scope of our documentation. When I wrote about creating buttons in InDesign, I included a topic called "Creating button rollover states" that merely hints at one way of creating a hot spot. After I write this blog entry, I'll link to it from that Help page.

TIP: If you create blog entries or videos for InDesign, or are aware of useful links, please add a comment with a link to the related Help topic. It's a good way to highlight valuable community content.

Let's suppose you have a map of France, and you want the Eiffel Tower to appear when (1) the user hovers the mouse pointer over the Paris area or (2) the user clicks in the Paris area.

For those of you who aren't aware of Kuler, go into InDesign, choose Window > Extensions > Kuler, and start playing around. Kuler is a set of colors and themes designed by an online community. You can view videos here and here, and you can read about Kuler in an InDesign Help topic.

For those of you who've already played around with Kuler, you may want to check out the new Community Pulse feature. Community Pulse is a data visualization that displays colors of downloaded Kuler themes on a color wheel. Users can explore the relative popularity of colors by different countries, time periods, and tags.

This screenshot shows the popularity of colors downloaded in the USA (l) and Brazil (r) in Spring 2008. The larger circles and bars indicate more popular colors (i.e., themes with those colors were downloaded more often).

There is a lot of data packed into the feature. To get started:
- Sign in with your Adobe ID to change the menu options
- Mouse over the histogram to see colors by hue on the color wheel
- Try the granularity slider to see more or less color detail
- Select the comparison icon (two circles) to compare/contrast views

You can read more about Community Pulse here.

I'm fairly certain this blog entry won't interest you. I'm writing this for Google. By posting a link on this blog, I can send a message to Google that certain links should be promoted.

Our Community Help page uses the Google Custom Search Engine. Currently, searching for "Preflight" on the Community Help page yields unexpected results. The first result -- which I don't want to link to because I don't want to promote it -- goes to a community web page that does a fine job of describing the Preflight workflow -- for InDesign CS3. As you may know, InDesign CS4 has a revamped Preflight feature. Another problem is that a less significant Help topic appears higher on the list than this one. Or this one. Or this one.

It's a problem that the first topic deals with CS3 content. If someone starts InDesign CS4, chooses Help > InDesign Help, searches for "Preflight," and clicks the first link, she's done exactly what she's supposed to do. And now she's reading misleading information. We're not allowed to manually boost or demote websites -- that's all handled by Google. However, we can boost certain pages by linking to them. A more drastic option is to exclude websites. I can do that, but I prefer not to.

Fortunately, "preflight" is the only search term that's yielding poor results. All the other search terms seem fine to me. There are a couple of Help topics that should be appearing higher in the list of search results:

Masters

Mail merge

Word count

One of the nice things about having Help on the Web is that I can update the Help files between releases. If someone points out an error or omission, I can edit the source files, and a couple weeks later, it’s as though the files were never wrong.

I can also add new topics. As I’ve been analyzing search data and survey comments, I realized I missed a few things.

A Complete List of Videos

Even though I had already blogged about videos, several people requested a list of videos organized by topic. Your wish is my command. I created a new Help topic that organizes videos by subject.

The Navigator panel

When I heard that the program team was removing the Navigator panel, I made the mistake of deleting the old topic rather than leaving it in and explaining what happened to the feature. “Navigator” ended up being the #4 search term in November. Ouch. So I added a new topic cleverly entitled, “About the Navigator panel.” I explain that it’s been replaced by Power Zoom.

Contact Sheets

“Contact sheets” was a top 10 search entry, but there’s nothing in Help on the Web that tells people how to create contact sheets. Fortunately, a few bloggers and authors have written about using Adobe products to create contact sheets, so if people did a search, they were most likely able to find something to help them out. Still, if people search only within Help, I don’t want them to draw the dreaded "No results found" message. So I created a topic called “Creating contact sheets.”

Foreign Affairs

Every now and then, someone asks how to edit Japanese or Arabic text in InDesign. Even though I create an entirely different Help system for Asian versions of InDesign, I realized I never pointed this out to English customers in Help. So I wrote a new topic called “Working with additional languages.”

If you notice any errors in these new topics, or if you’re aware of any other gaps or mistakes in InDesign Help, please let me know. Just leave a comment.

When you choose Help > InDesign Help, the Community Help and Support Page opens. Some people have told Adobe that they'd prefer opening the main Help on the Web page. Now, you can select an option to start on that page.

Here's how to change the default:

1. Open the main Help on the Web page.

2. Select the "Help on the Web" option.

Keep in mind that no matter which option you go with, you can always click a link to jump to the other page. In my mind, it makes sense to route Help > InDesign Help to Help on the Web. If I want to go to the Community Help and Support page, I can choose Help > Online Support.

Let me know if you have any questions or concerns. I'll pass them along.

In InDesign Help, I wrote about using preference settings to determine whether a scaled text frame has a magnifying glass effect: It's buried in a list of notes:

If you edit the text or scale a frame within threaded frames when the Adjust Scaling Percentage preference is selected, the text is scaled, even if it moves to a different frame. However, if Apply To Content is selected, any text that flows to a different frame as a result of editing is no longer scaled.

Got that? I'd like to flesh out this idea a bit on my blog, where I don't have to concern myself with a limited scope and translation resources.