InDesignSecrets Podcast 051

11 Responses discussing this post. Add yours below.

1. josh

   May 26th, 2007 • 2:00 pmLink

   One thing I thought was important to mention about text variables that you guys didn’t touch on was how/when the variables refresh.

   Say you create something like a running header that grabs the first instance of a paragraph style on a page. If you immediately change the text in that first instance, you’ll see that the variable doesn’t immediately update (assuming you are zoomed so you can see both). It takes a screen redraw — which means a zoom in/out, a scroll of the document that will cause the text variable area to get pushed out of view, or a resize of the text frame containing the variable.

   When I was on the pre-release for CS3 I actually submitted a bug about this issue and the response from the InDesign team was that it would have been too much of a memory resource to continuously monitor all variables for new/updated data. Instead they opted to only display updates during redraw. Their most helpful suggestion for this was to recommend SHIFT+F5 to force a screen redraw. This works great for me on Windows (haven’t tested it on Mac though).

   I think this is helpful for people to be aware of since you could seriously stare at a running header waiting for it to update until you’re blue in the face and unless you initiate some kind of redraw, it’s not going to change.

2. Anne-Marie

   May 26th, 2007 • 2:48 pmLink

   Josh, you’re absolutely right …. I don’t know how we could have neglected to mention that crucial fact! I’m so used to Shift-F5′ing that I forget it’s an extra operation. And yes, it works on Macs, same keyboard shortcut.

   I think changing the zoom, or turning Preview on/off also updates the Running header type of variable.

3. Anne-Marie

   May 31st, 2007 • 4:54 pmLink

   More comments about the Running Header variable discussion appear here, fyi.

4. Jason Cutler

   June 4th, 2007 • 2:07 pmLink

   The File Info panel shouldn’t really be an obscure feature. This is for tagging your files with metadata that can be searched via Bridge or proper Digital Asset Management programs. You can customize these fields with a program called MetaGrove, but it ain’t for the faint of heart. Funny how Acrobat 7 let you add custom metadata fields but other CS2 apps didn’t.

5. Diane S

   June 6th, 2007 • 9:45 pmLink

   Maybe I was in a post-lunch carbo coma when I listening to this but I honestly cant comprehend when I would use text variables. Is there a visual I can see? Maybe Mr Murphy has a clip in one of the video podcasts?

6. Anne-Marie

   June 7th, 2007 • 1:28 amLink

   Hi Diane! Variables are just like the “Automatic Page Number” special character that’s in all page layout programs. It’s something you insert into a text frame right in the text flow (before or after a character or all by itself in its own frame), you can insert it from the Type menu, you can select the variable placeholder and format it, but what it actually “says” in the document depends on the type of variable it is.

   With an auto page number, it “says” the page number it’s on, and the exact same variable looks different (says something else) depending on the page you inserted it on.

   When you insert the File Name text variable, what it says depends on what you named the document. Other text variables are in the same vein, such as Last Modified Date and Output Date.

   The Running Header variable — the one we were talking about in the podcast — is the most advanced one, I guess. What it shows on a page when you insert it is a duplicate of a text string — the first or last instance of text on that page that’s formatted with a given style, the style you specify when you set up the variable.

   I did a video tutorial on the Running Header variable for Adobe, you can access it here: Adobe Video Workshop. When you get there, choose InDesign as the program and then scroll through the available videos until you get to the one about Running Headers. It’s about 5 minutes long.

7. Mitch Osborne

   June 10th, 2007 • 5:06 amLink

   Thanks for a great discussion on hyperlinks! Although I’ve inserted URL links successfully into a couple of recent publications, your explanation of how the process works clarifies a few things that were confusing. I’ve got one question, though.

   One publication I lay out includes ads submitted as PDFs. The ads come with active URL hyperlinks included (embedded?). When I create a PDF of the whole document including those ads, the hyperlinks within them are no longer active, and I have to reactivate them manually in Acrobat. Is there any way to place a PDF ad into an Indesign document and automatically keep its hyperlinks active and alive when you create the new PDF?

8. Anne-Marie

   June 10th, 2007 • 4:15 pmLink

   Mitch, great question. I would love to find an answer to that!

9. Beatrice

   June 18th, 2007 • 6:43 amLink

   I’d like to say that all of this hyperlink information cured my confusion, but I feel lost. When I exported my newsletter to PDF all of the email addresses and websites that were in the newsletter are working hyperlinks without me doing nothing more than typing the text in the layout. I didnt use the hyperlink menus or commands AT ALL. So if this worked, it makes me think that the option is nothing more than adding a box and line style - which by the way, mine came out with NO lines. I have CS3.

10. Anne-Marie

    June 18th, 2007 • 2:10 pmLink

    Beatrice, I ran into this myself the other day — noticed that every URL in a PDF was a working link even though I hadn’t done anything special to them in ID — but didn’t have time to investigate further. I was looking at the PDF in Acrobat Pro 8; so I’m assuming it’s a new feature in that program (at least); i.e., recognizes URLs immediately. I don’t know if the same would be true in Reader 8, or earlier versions of Reader.

    I know in Acrobat 7, you could run a command from the Tools menu to automatically convert URLs into links; it only worked reliably, though, when the full URL was on a single line. Ones that broke onto two or more lines you had to create yourself with Acrobat’s Link tool.

    Again, though, it’s crucial to test the PDF in the versions of Adobe Reader that the users will have; to see if the links are working there as well as in Acrobat.

11. David Blatner

    June 19th, 2007 • 12:49 pmLink

    Beatrice (and Anne-Marie): Yes, this is a new feature in Acrobat 8. If you don’t like it, in Acrobat 8’s preferences dialog box, you can turn off “Create Links from URLS.”