InDesign Docs

That new retina display iPad with double the resolution of previous iPads is gorgeous. But how are you going to author your DPS content so that it looks good on both this device and the earlier versions of the iPad? Join Colin Fleming, Adobe Digital Publishing Evangelist, for an Ask a CS Pro session on Friday, April 6th to learn how to efficiently design and author for both types of iPad. There are a couple things to keep in mind, and some pretty nifty solutions so that you can make your content look great on all iPad devices with minimal extra work. Adobe has just updated their guidance on authoring Digital Publishing Suite for the new iPad, and Colin will demonstrate many of these techniques in this session.

He will cover:

• Layout design for flexible publishing
• Handling interactive content for two resolutions
• Building folios for “renditions”

As an added bonus, I’ll be answering questions in the chat pod and interrupting Colin whenever I see fit.

When: Friday, April 6, 2012 at 12pm Pacific. Session start times for other time zones follow: http://bit.ly/HE6cmj

Register now! http://adobe.ly/GSrQo1

Update: This session has already taken place. Click here to view the recording.

Ask a CS Pro: Producing publications with Digital Publishing Suite

Friday, December 17 · 12:00pm – 1:00pm Pacific Standard Time

If you’ve never attended an Ask a Pro session, you’re missing out on free training. Here’s how it works. At a certain time (Friday at noon, West Coast time), you log in to a Connect session (http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/askcspro). You can log in a few minutes early to make sure everything works. Then watch and listen.

Here’s the event description:

“Learn how to use the tools and viewer technology of Adobe Digital Publishing Suite to produce publications for the iPad and other tablet devices. Join Chris Converse from Codify Design Studio to learn how to use the designer-friendly Digital Publishing Suite tools now available on Adobe Labs to create compelling content that combine the richness of print design with the interactivity of digital.”

Click this link to learn more.

Pantone, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of X-Rite, Incorporated, and world-renowned authority on color, has recently made available the PANTONE PLUS Digital Libraries Installer, a free utility that allows you to integrate the PANTONE PLUS Libraries quickly and easily into the Adobe Creative Suite.

The PANTONE PLUS SERIES line of publications is a major enhancement to the PANTONE MATCHING SYSTEM® and retains all of the previously existing PANTONE MATCHING SYSTEM Colors.

How to obtain the new libraries

To obtain the new libraries, download the appropriate installer for your operating system from this page on Pantone’s website:

http://www.pantone.com/colors4adobe

Please read the important information provided on that download page, as well as in the PANTONE PLUS Color Library Technical Notes which can be downloaded from the same page as a PDF document.

Lots of good articles and videos on the new features in InDesign CS5.

InDesign CS5 New Feature Videos – Anne-Marie Concepción created videos about the new InDesign CS5 videos. If you subscribe to Lynda.com, you can view them all. If you’re not a member, you can view the six underlined ones. They’re good.

Eight Great New Features in InDesign CS5 – Just a fantastic Peachpit.com article by a fantastic writer.

PC Magazine’s Review of InDesign CS5 – Matthew Murray raves about the new version:

“If print is actually dying, someone forgot to tell Adobe. Not only do the changes the company has stuffed into the latest version of InDesign ($699 list new, $199 list upgrade) rank among the most extensive and useful any product has received in Creative Suite 5, they also represent a major (and long overdue) sea change for the product itself.”

Entertaining Video on Spanning and Splitting Columns – Tim Cole is back! If you’re an InDesign fan, pay attention to Tim Cole’s blog. In this 8-minute video, Tim covers the new Span/Split Columns feature in InDesign CS5, including pitfalls to avoid. I was a little disappointed that Tim didn’t break out his Pee Wee Herman voice, but at least he gave us a Monty Python song, “Span, span, span, span . . . wonderful span.”

Video on using InDesign CS5 content in Flash Pro – Paul Trani created this excellent video on the FLA export feature in InDesign (which was called XFL export in CS4). Paul is coming at this from a Flash Pro angle.

By the way, if you want to view the animated SWF file that was exported from InDesign, I posted the City Guide here. I’ll have more to say about animation and interactivity later.

Michael Murphy’s 36-minute overview – Michael goes over most of the new features in this videocast on www.theindesigner.com. He doesn’t post content very often, but when he does, it’s worth the wait.

That’s all for now.

It’s now official. There will be a new version of InDesign. Following on the heels of InDesign CS, CS2, CS3, and CS4, the new version is called – to the surprise of few – “InDesign CS5.” Even though the new version of InDesign won’t be available until the end of April, you can see what’s new on the InDesign product page and in the What’s new Help topic.

That’s right. A version of InDesign CS5 Help is already posted on the web. Here’s the link to the main page of InDesign CS5 Help. And here’s a link to InCopy CS5 Help as well as the new InCopy CS5 features.

Here are the big new features of InDesign CS5:

Paragraphs that span or split columns

Improved selection techniques

Gap tool

Live corners

Different page sizes in one document

Animation for interactive documents

Enhanced Layers panel

Live captions

Improved Flash export

Tracking text changes

CS Review

Mini Bridge

That should be enough information to get you started. Over the next few weeks, I’ll have a lot more to say about InDesign CS5. By the way, if you come across any good videos or articles on InDesign CS5, please drop a note, either in the commenting section of a Help topic or here on this blog.

UPDATE: David Blatner wrote an excellent roundup of new InDesign CS5 features.

The new eBooks Authoring page on Adobe.com provide detailed how-to guides and video tutorials on creating eBooks with InDesign.

InDesign is an excellent way to author eBooks compatible with a variety of devices — from PCs and smartphones to dedicated eReading devices like the Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble nook, and Sony Reader. Take a look at these how-to guides and video tutorials to learn how to create eBooks in InDesign and output them for viewing across screen types. Again, here’s the eBook authoring link.

In addition, InDesign Magazine made available part 1 of Gabriel Powell’s excellent article on using InDesign to create eBooks. Continue reading…

I decided to take a small break from writing about the cool new InDesign features to link to a few resources I like.

Blatner Tools for Adobe InDesign – David offers a collection of 12 InDesign plug-ins that adds over 100 new features to InDesign CS3 and CS4.

Holiday Papercraft – Mike Rankin teaches you how to use InDesign to create a holiday ornament for a Christmas tree.

Script for Balancing Ragged Lines – Keith Gilbert’s script gives you more control over which line should be longer.

Setting tabs videos – In the Set tabs help topic, someone left a comment complaining about how difficult it is to set tabs. So I asked Neil Oliver to make a video on creating tabs, and went above and beyond the call of duty, creating a series of videos on creating tabs. Thanks again, Neil!

Creating an eBook with InDesign Part I and Part II – Gabriel Powell walks you through the steps of creating an eBook (also called EPUB) document in InDesign. Gabriel also provides a more in-depth study in the Oct/Nov issue of InDesign Magazine, a truly excellent resource. Oh, and he tells how to use the Oxygen XML editor to edit EPUB files.

OpenType Fractions Guide (PDF) – Anne-Marie Concepción shows what happens when you apply the OpenType: Fractions feature to different kinds of fractions set in each of the 30+ OpenType fonts that are bundled with the Creative Suite. Oldie but goodie.

Designing Forms for InDesign – Michael Murphy takes a look at adding form elements to an InDesign layout to create Acrobat-friendly checkboxes, radio buttons and comb fields, all of which can be achieved with a little help from anchored objects, GREP find/change and tables.

(You can find other resources for creating forms in the Create PDF forms Help topic.)

Using Text Wrap within a Table – James Fritz explains how to get text to wrap around a picture in a table cell.

Super Strokes in InDesign – Jeff Witchel’s video from Layers Magazine teaches you how to use the Stroke panel to create special effects.

Remove Unwanted Spaces in InDesign – Barb Binder has done a good job of promoting her training courses by writing thoughtful articles on various InDesign topics and linking to them in Help. Here’s an example.

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.

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.