Archive for August, 2009

AIR App for Searching CS Shortcuts

Posted on August 20, 2009 by Bob Bringhurst | Comments (1)

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:

AIR shortcuts2.jpg

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.

Page Numbering Gallery

Posted on August 19, 2009 by Bob Bringhurst | Comments (45)

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.

Simple page number

page number simple.jpg

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.

Continue reading…

Twitter Bug

Posted on August 12, 2009 by Bob Bringhurst | Comments (0)

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.)