Indesign Secrets

Andrew B. wrote (on the InDesign mail list): I have yet to find out how to set up two flows that actually work, easy in Quark but apparently impossible in ID without accidentally stumbling over the right combination of preferences and settings, if there is one.

This trick, like many others, is actually simple after you see how to do it, but I agree that it’s not immediately intuitive. The first trick is to set up frames on your master pages. (This is one of the few times that I bother with…

Listen in your browser:
InDesignSecrets-051.mp3 (16.2 MB, 34:02 minutes)
(the transcript of this podcast will be posted soon)

• Announcements: “InCopy CS3/InDesign CS3 Integration” released (AM’s video tutorial title for lynda.com); our InDesign CS3 Keyboard Shortcuts poster is on press this week
• Hyperlinks: Creating, Deleting, Swearing at, Modifying, etc.
• All about Text Variables, a new feature in CS3
• Hot Button Post of the Week: AM’s rant about One-Button Mice
• Obscure InDesign Feature of the Week: File Info
  

So, here’s an existential conundrum for you: Why would InDesign tell you that you’re missing a font that doesn’t exist?

Exhibit 1: This screen shot of an InDesign alert, telling me I’m missing “Times 85 Heavy” …

Perhaps the layout was created in an alternate universe where there’s a numbered version of Times? That was my first thought this morning, when I opened the problem child document sent to me by a couple new InDesign users.

Whenever I’m teaching InDesign to Mac users, I always ask them early on, “How many of you are using two-button mice?” And except for a few memorable bright spots in my career, the typical response is always depressingly, frustratingly the same: Hardly anyone.
Last week, during a series of training sessions at a magazine publisher, only […]

This isn’t InDesign news, but many of us are now installing InDesign as part of the newly released Adobe Creative Suite 3. The default installation of the Suite installs Version Cue CS3, a utility for creating and managing file versions.
During the install, in Mac OS X systems which have the personal firewall enabled, the installer […]

Mergers don’t always occur smoothly. One of the results of Adobe’s merger with Macromedia was an abortive attempt to combine the Adobe Exchange (formerly known as Adobe Studio Exchange) and Macromedia Exchange. The exchanges contain actions, plug-ins, scripts, templates, tutorials, and much more. We’ve referred to it several times—for example, when I wrote a posting […]

Listen in your browser:
InDesignSecrets-050.mp3 (13.8 MB, 29:01 minutes)
(the transcript of this podcast will be posted soon)

• We’re 50!
• Quizzler Winner — Where’s the System Color Picker?
• News: Free CS3 Tryouts and manuals, Tim Cole’s InDesign blog, Upcoming conferences
• Dealing with “protected” fonts (unembeddable in a PDF)
• Hot Button Post of the Week: Printing a List of Links
• Obscure InDesign Feature of the Week: Crop Amount
  

If you use Adobe InCopy — or you’re considering using InCopy alongside InDesign — I strongly recommend that you check out Anne-Marie Concpeción’s new title at lynda.com: InCopy CS3 + InDesign CS3 Integration. InCopy is a great editorial tool which has replaced MS Word in many departments, but until now it has been surprisingly difficult to get quality instruction and information about it. This video title is likely the most clear and helpful explanation of how InCopy and InDesign can work together that you can find without having a trainer come to your company for a day or two for customized training. (Of course, if you do need customized training, be sure to contact us for a recommendation.)

Remember that you can get a free one-week trial to Lynda.com if you’re not already a subscriber.

Everyone needs help sometimes. InDesign CS3 and the CS3 applications now give you some new ways to find it: You can search Help on the Internet, or you can easily download a PDF file that you can search in Acrobat or Reader. In the future you may even be able to add your own comments […]

James wrote: So I managed to persuade the boss to buy me CS3 design standard… a few changes here and there — all together fantastic! But where do find the little shortcut icon that used to bring up the ‘Text Frame Options’ dialogue box!? It’s things like that that really get my goat!

James, it took me a while to figure out what you were talking about, but then it clicked: The PageMaker Toolbar! In CS2, you could open this toolbar by choosing it from the Window menu. In CS3, they…