Comments on: Technology sneak: InDesign -> Flash

By: Flash Designer

Flash Designer — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 07:34:16 +0000

I’m glad that you are able to post despite your occupancy. I will try its free trial issue.

By: Frank Spangenberg

Frank Spangenberg — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 02:38:35 +0000

Regarding “live link”:
For creating (print) documents, we are able to link files (mostly graphics/pixel files) for years — even in Word! This enables the possibility to change small things in the original document of the linked file during the last minutes or to exchange the exported version with the one of a new document. One time consuming thing is the export (if I’m not able to use native formats), every time I make a change, a new export has to be done manually. Just integrate a new export strategy: export the document once and update the export on every save automatically (of course the user has to switch on this behavior per document). There are many ways to improve these change-export-import processes, without exporting/importing and searching for the documents manually: “Open in InDesign” for Flash, direct InDesign-Import in Flash, connecting InDesign document and the exported document so they know who’s “mother and child”…
Example: Changing a picture would lead to a “nice” export domino game. Exporting the picture from Photoshop to something, update InDesign document, export this again to Flash and contribute changes to Flash (however this will work).
Regarding color management (CM):
At first, it should be possible to control the InDesign to Flash way with the standard CM tools. Notice the user, that the document colors are converted to sRGB, let him see a preview of the document colors (soft proof: sRGB), let him choose/review CM settings (profiles, rendering intents, …)… (not to mention, that the Creative Suite CM implementation needs also a complete revision).
sRGB-only files would limit the whole showcase to the web, where you don’t know what the screens’ color spaces are — so you care less. If you want to present something in a more predictable environment, with wide gamut screens, reducing to sRGB is a no-go criteria. Use cases can be product presentations (design company to customer) and approval processes for future products with Flash based applications.

By: Kapil Tundwal

Kapil Tundwal — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 15:53:20 +0000

Check out something similar here-
QuarkViewer for QuarkXPress 7:
http://labs.quark.com/projectdetail.aspx?did=20
QuarkViewer is an XTensions module for QuarkXPress 7.3.x that allows users to export QuarkXPress layout pages for viewing in Microsoft Silverlight player. QuarkViewer may run as a pure desktop application or a Web application.
Our approach has been 1 click export. Behavior and user interface are pre-packaged and only relevant data (previews, vector info) is collected during export. Thus this is not meant for production workflow but is more of an alternative way to distrubute your artwork in a rich reading experience environment.
And last but not the least, it is available today :)

By: Frank Spangenberg

Frank Spangenberg — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 16:02:43 +0000

Another “Interactive Designer”? As long as there is no direct data exchange between InDesign and Flash (no manual conversion, live update) and no Flash color management (not limited to sRGB) it's useless as the first mentioned. InDesign would need some more product logic to better participate in a automated workflow, instead of some flicker options... :-( Please: Don't imitate, innovate! [Don't stress. No one is trying to imitate Quark. Are you saying that being able to convert an InDesign document into a Flash authoring file with high fidelity is no good if there's not a live link between the two? Could you elaborate on why that is? As for color management, I think we'll see some good things now that Adobe's chocolate can get into Macromedia's peanut butter. Having said that, what are your needs for non-sRGB color management in Flash? Wouldn't starting there be a huge win (relative to the zero color management that Flash currently does)? --J.]

By: Carlos Garro

Carlos Garro — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 20:09:49 +0000

WOW, waiting this feature for long time…
Since InDesign 1 (my happy-tears drop)…
Way to go my friends!!!!

By: Klaus Nordby

Klaus Nordby — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 10:25:19 +0000

It’s very cool technology, and will be a great tool for many in repurposing content — so I’m of course rooting for this “preview” to be included in CS4.
On a related note: would it not be damn useful to have a PSD export in InDesign, which preserved objects, layers, text formatting, etc., so we could slice up stuff in PS and perform a Save for Web? I sure think so. It’s PITA to work with text in PS, but a pure joy to do so in InDesign.

By: Mordy Golding

Mordy Golding — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 05:41:22 +0000

I posted video clips of the actual keynote where Myke demonstrated this preview John. The link is here:
http://rwillustrator.blogspot.com/2008/03/video-clips-of-adobes-keynote-session.html
The clips are posted to YouTube as well.
I think the key take away here is that the clips show Myke doing TWO things — one is a quick and simple SWF export from ID. As you say, that’s nice. But nothing earth shattering — considering that no one would ever consider authoring SWF files in ID. But his second half of the demo shows him exporting a file from ID to Flash (NOT via SWF), and to me, that’s extremely interesting. It means Flash is getting rich layout information from InDesign. It may be hard to see on the video, but the layout and typography translates EXTREMELY well between the two apps. For a designer to get that level of control of fine typography and layout using Flash alone is simply not feasible.

By: JonPad

JonPad — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 04:54:12 +0000

Hey. it’s great to see you still find time to post. I remember making time to check my email, while my son was sleeping.
Exciting news, about the InDesign/Flash compatibility, but I’m still trying to get the designers here to use style sheets… ;-)