*** From the Archives ***
This article is from October 19, 2008, and is no longer current.
Help for InDesign CS4 Early Birds
I’m working on my seminar handout for the “Zen of InDesign Repair” session at the upcoming InDesign Conference Master Class in Seattle. The last page of the handout has a list of URLs to what I consider to be the most useful Adobe Knowledgebase articles for troubleshooting flaky InDesign files.
I’ve done this session a few times already, so I have the CS3 links down pat. Hmm, says I to myself, I wonder if Adobe has posted any InDesign CS4-related troubleshooting articles? Even though it’s only been selling for few days at this point?
I went to their Knowledgebase Search page and had it search its support articles on the keyword “CS4” when InDesign was listed as one of the products affected. Yikes! Here are the first hits out of almost 70 it found:
Thinking about it, though, I realized that like all software developers, Adobe could not wait until the product was error-free before it shipped, otherwise it wouldn’t ever ship a thing. (This goes against the grain of publication designers, of course. Different industry, different rules and expectations.) At least they’re laying it all out there for anyone to see.
Do my lemons taste like lemonade yet? ;-)
If you’re an early adopter of InDesign CS4, you should get over there and read some of these so you can head off trouble before it happens; or at least be aware of the “known bugs” so you don’t drive yourself crazy. (Cross-reference users, I’m talking to you: Check out the LONG knowledge base article on x-ref glitches.)
Sigh … time to add a new page to my handout.
 |
I think I stumbled on one myself and perhaps someone else can confirm it. The power zoom feature wasn’t working with my scroll wheel until I uninstall the Intellipoint software.
That was on my Vista 64 box. On WinXP it works fine.
Bob … weird! Good sleuthing.
To be fair, I should say that much of the information in the InDesign CS4 “general troubleshooting” sorts of guides is the same generic troubleshooting info as in CS3 and CS2 (rebuild preferences, check for corrupt fonts, etc.). If you’re using CS4 you don’t want to read a support article on CS3 even if the info’s the same.
There are a few specific-to-CS4 support articles though, beyond the ones captured in the screen shot, such as the one on cross-references I linked to.
The much disliked application frame window does not remember its size for example.
I get that with CS3? I’m on Windows XP and I’ve not heard anyone else have this problem, so wahooooo, because I thought I was going mad.
Well InDesign CS4 is still stripping OPI comments from placed FPO PDF’s when they are exported as PDF. Only good thing is eps FPO’s now work. But it seems like a step backward to me.
Eugene, I was referring to CS4’s new power zoom feature.
Couldn’t wait? Or is it they don’t care much? Adobe is taking advantage of the fact that the competition is weak so they feel overly-confident about releasing sloppy work.
Sadly, this will continue for a long time.
Sorry Bob, I should have said, I was responding to Fvd Geest.
Unless they were talking about the Powerzoom too. I thought that Fvd Geest meant that when they open up the Application the frame size for the application sometimes is not full screen.
Energon Cube
Nearly most software is released out there without it being fully ready. Simply because there are so many different types of computers, configurations, other apps on the computer, different OSs and other things. So it’s nearly impossible to test all the areas of all the software before releasing.
For instance my game console has to be updated nearly every time I plug it in, and I often buy computer games, that when installed instantly need patches installed to fix bugs.
Personally, I prefer that we now have that choice. As the software can be released, problems can be fixed with a simple patch that is provided for free.
I don’t think it’s sloppy, I think it’s just handy for software companies to get their software out there and then fix the bugs as they pop up.
Hope this is not off topic but it is an early adopter issue:
I have been unable to find a way to bring my Keyboard shortcuts into CS4 ID.
Any help appreciated!
Does CS4 come with Quicklook plugins for the Mac?
@F vd Geest and Eugene,
I get this problem, too, CS3 on Windows XP. Quite annoying and you’re not alone :) (heh, I figured it was just my weirdo machine)
F vd Geest, are you saying this happens with CS4, too?
The other day, I added several objects to a library panel. They all came in as “Untitled.” I had to manually rename each one. That doesn’t seem correct, especially since I added about 8-9 objects. What a pain.
@MichaelR: The free Keyboard Shortcuts plug-in from dtptools.com should be able to let you export your CS3 shortcuts and then import them into CS4… except that the CS4 version hasn’t been released yet. It should be released very soon.
@Iestyn: No, I don’t think there are any QuickLook plug-ins for IDcs4. Not sure if Code-Line’s software will work with CS4 yet. Haven’t tried.
@Tim: I think ID has always used “Untitled” when you put stuff in a library. How would it know what you want to call it?
David,
I distinctly remember seeing Michael Murphy do a video on this. He pulled them into the library, and they all named themselves after the file names.
Also, if you pull one of the “untitled” objects out of the library onto your page, it appears in the links panel with the file name. Why can’t the library default to the file name instead of us having to manually rename them all?
I tried the same operation in ID CS3, and it defaults to the file names.
@Tim: My apologies; you are correct when it comes to images and file names in libraries! CS4 does appear to break this. I’ll mention it to the folks at Adobe.
No prob. Thanks for checking and passing it along.
In the Mac version duplex printing appears to be broken much like it was when CS3 came out. You get one-sided printouts in spite of any print-driver settings selected.
It took a few months to fix this last time (and frequent denials from Adobe support and/or blame-it-on-your-printer driver), but in the end, it was all fixed by an update to InDesign.
@ Lester…. denials at Adobe? C’mon. I mean, the fact that engineers over at the IDCS3 forums on adobe.com (one in particular), blaming Apple for everything and telling users to wait until 10.6 came out for fixes that… are fixed in this edition of CS?
Nahhhh. C’mon.
I am a huge Indesign fan and super user. But I pray every day for Quark to stay up to par with them and to keep them on their toes. And for it to rain on every sw engineer that blames the OS.
David, which OS issues are fixed in CS3?
The fact is we’re still waiting for fixes from Apple for things like the Hide problem, which affects applications other than InDesign.
Problem with InDesign CS4 for Windows: at random moments the text tool functions simply cease to work. I can move the box with the selection tool and highlight text with the text tool, but when I try to type something or delete something, it simply does nothing. Leaving it alone for a few seconds or minutes seems to resolve the problem, but it is very frustrating. Anyone else have this problem? Any solutions?
All of a sudden my IDCS4 Direct Selection tool will not allow me to move text or picture boxes. I can move them with my Selection tool as well as move them with my arrow keys, just not my Direct Select. I trashed my Preferences, defaulted my tools and restarted to no avail. Has anybody experienced this problem before?
I have noticed that when using IDCS4 my open file window keeps getting hidden underneath the tool bar at the top. I have to keep going up to Window-Arrange-Float All Windows. I use to be able to click on the desktop and the window would be visible long enough for me to click and drag it back down but not any longer… The window shouldn’t be allowed to pass that point in the first place. Is there any quicker way to fix this? Has anyone else had this issue?