Recently in Announcements Category

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.