If you're interested in saving time and working more efficiently with InDesign you really should check it out. And now there's even more incentive with Gabriel's new podcasts at http://www.instantindesign.com/. The book and the podcasts make a great combination!

Anyway, what I'm loving about this scanner is that it's fast and the paper handling rocks. This little guy scans color/duplex just as fast as my black and white laser printer prints! It's rated at 18ppm duplex (so 36 page images) in color and really chews through stacks of paper with its 50-sheet ADF. I was impressed by a few test scans, but I'm pretty picky and I thought it would be a good idea to put this scanner through a real test.

I recently moved my office and decided it was time to do some housekeeping/purging, and I couldn't think of a better (and geekier) way to tidy things up than a paper-to-PDF conversion. Amidst conference calls, emails, and various other projects, I managed to scan 35 pounds of paper today. It's in a big box ready for the recycler in the morning!

35 POUNDS! Gone!

The only thing I'm bummed about is that I cannot directly control the printer within Acrobat 8 Professional. According to Rick Borstein, this is because the scanner doesn't support a TWAIN driver. Not ideal, but I can live with it because the driver software that comes with the scanner can be configured so that by pushing just one button I can convert up to 50 pages at a time into a single PDF and have it opened directly inside Acrobat. At that point I can just save the PDF or post-process it with some cleanup, compression, or OCR using the features in Acrobat 8 Professional.

Excuse me while I grab another box of paper from the basement....

[Update: Somehow I forgot to mention that this great little scanner includes a license of Acrobat 8 Professional. The scanner is selling for $425US on Amazon. Acrobat 8 Professional retails for about $450US. You do the math!]

I'm sure the updater will be posted on the web soon, but in the meantime just choose Help>Check for Updates inside Acrobat to get the goods. Please post your experience and feedback here!

The filter is even capable of converting text variables, complex tables, and numbered lists. If you also use their Cross-References plug-in for InDesign then cross-references from FrameMaker are also converted.

Just last week I met with a customer who is interested in converting some existing documents from FrameMaker to InDesign and this new plug-in should help a lot if that's the direction you're headed. Possibly the most interesting this about this plug-in is the pricing model. Instead of paying a specific license fee, yo only pay for how much you use and only when you're satisfied with the conversion results. That's right, you can download and use the plug-in for free and test the conversion results for yourself. When you're happy with the results you can purchase usage credits and save the new InDesign files!

Lots of folks will get good mileage out of layer comps for InDesign, and I suspect folks doing lots of design variations for ads, circulars and magazines with regional variations will love it the most. A few tidbits from their press release that sum it up better than I can:

• Layer Comps allows to save different settings of layer visibility, lock state, order, printability, guide visibility and lock state.
• Comps can be also exported into all formats supported by InDesign. You can export a single comp into .inx as a snapshot or multiple comps into PDF to show your clients layout alternatives.
• All documents created with the Layer Comps can still be opened and edited without this plug-in. The layer settings will remain the same.

I use Snapz Pro every day for a variety of purposes. A few examples include projects I've done with Total Training, Lynda.com, and all of my writing projects. I'm sure all of the trainers and authors out there will be thrilled about this release. Enjoy!

In this case, it's Flash Media Encoder and Flash Media Server allowing my to watch multiple live video feeds of Dean Karnazes attempting to break the world record for miles run on a treadmill in 24 hours! How fitting that he's making this world record attempt on the summer solstice. Did I mention that he's doing this two stories above Times Square in New York City?

I've met Dean, and last fall I had the chance to run four marathons with him in his quest to run 50 marathons in all 50 US states in 50 consecutive days. What a great guy and what a fantastic experience. If anybody can break the record it's Dean. I wish I could be there to run with Dean in NYC today, but at least I can enjoy a bit of the event remotely. Go, Dean! (and thanks to FMS for the video streams)

Everybody else, read on, because I’m about to show you how to make short work of formatting tables in InDesign CS3. In fact, we’ll do it in less than 30 seconds.

I tried the script on it's own, but it doesn't recognize INDD files without a bit of tweaking. Here's the solution:

1. Locate the file called "WasScriptLibrary.jsx" on your hard drive and open it with the ExtendScript Toolkit application or your favorite script editor.
2. Locate this string in line 755:

   WasLib.fileFilters.putValue( "Contact Sheet","PNG,JPG,JPEG,TIF,TIFF,GIF,AI,PSD,PDF,EPS,EPSF" );

3. Change the string to:

   WasLib.fileFilters.putValue( "Contact Sheet","PNG,JPG,JPEG,TIF,TIFF,GIF,AI,PSD,PDF,EPS,EPSF,INDD" );

This allows INDD files to be included in InDesign contact sheets. Note that it places different file sizes at the same dimensions and always places the first page of the INDD file. Hope that helps!

1. Copy the file "Workflows" from this location on the old Mac HD/users/username/Library/Preferences/Acrobat/(version number)/Collab/Workflows to the same location on the new machine. The file path on Windows should be similar under the "Documents and Settings" folder.
2. Relaunch Acrobat.
3. Now copy the tracked PDFs from the old machine to the new machine. If the PDFs have the exact same file path on the new machine as they did on the old machine, then you're done. If they don't have the same file path, then just click their filename in the Tracker window and Acrobat will prompt you to tell it the new file path.

That should take care of it!

If that's not the case, the GL2DW extension can hiccup in the conversion process. To tidy things up before running the extension, open your site in GoLive and choose Site>Convert Site to New Structure. If the menu command is grayed out you're in the clear. If it's available, you should let 'er rip.

If you're using GoLive and don't plan to switch to Dreamweaver, we also want to hear from you! Is it emotional? A specific couple of features? A certain workflow? Let us know!

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Get more details and sign up online. Enjoy!

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In the meantime, I've been doing some testing and conferring with the InDesign team and I've dug up a few nuggets that should help you get acclimated to the possibilities:

1. InDesign CS3 can be used to place any version of InDesign document, all the way back to version 1.0.

2. Some folks are freaked out by this possibility and they want to know how to turn it off. Well, for better or worse, the same import filter that enables the placement of InDesign documents also enables the placement of EPS files. I really don't think you want to be turnin' that one off.

3. If you want to edit the original InDesign layout, just Option/Alt-double-click to edit the original layout in InDesign. The placed INDD looks great in the layout, but you cannot edit the individual pieces. If you need that functionality then I recommend an old standard: Copy and Paste.

There's more where this came from, but in the meantime, how do you imagine using this new capability?