Here’s What We Love about InDesign CS6
Time stoppeth for no man… or InDesign user, apparently, as Adobe today rolls out their announcement of InDesign CS6. Everyone knew CS6 was coming (Adobe said it would be released the first half of this year), and we at InDesignSecrets have all been using beta versions for a while — but until today we haven’t been able to discuss the features publicly. Now, let the floodgates open!
There are many features in InDesign CS6 to get excited about: the phenomenal ability create PDF form fields; the almost magical way you can set up objects on your page to move around when the page size changes; the option to export grayscale PDF files. There are also features that will make you scratch your head until you get used to them. For example, the Content Conveyor tools require some work to understand, but we’re convinced that some users will find this one of the most valuable features in the program.
All in all, there are dozens of new features in CS6. Until it is officially released we can’t really “review” the program as a whole, but what we can do is give you a good overview of what to expect and what you’ll want to pay attention to when CS6 shows up on your doorstep.
By the way, one of the biggest changes in CS6 is the availability of the Adobe Creative Cloud, which among other things, allows you to get access to all Adobe Creative Suite applications for a relatively modest monthly fee. We’ll be covering that in more detail in a later post. — The Editors
Creating Interactive Forms
PDF forms fields (checkboxes, text entry fields, and so on) have been a long requested feature and have finally been added to InDesign CS6. The easiest way to try out the new form fields is to switch to the Interactive for PDF workspace. While you are in this workspace, there is a new library panel available under the window menu called “Sample Buttons and Forms”.
After dragging out these sample form fields into your layout you can edit them with the Buttons and Froms panel (formerly the Button Panel). From here you can modify their attributes like their description, font size, read only and more. If you prefer to create form fields from scratch you can convert any InDesign object into a text field, check box, combo box, radio button, or signature field. If you would like to test your form you will need to export your layout to an interactive PDF since the preview panel has been renamed to the more accurate SWF preview panel.
One could argue that PDF Forms are in CS6 mainly due to Tony Harmer’s ignite session at last years PepCon where he beautifully crafted a poem pleading with Adobe to add PDF forms. This just goes to show that if you really want a feature added to InDesign, pleading your case to the InDesign Team (preferably in iambic pentameter) is. — fritz
Alternate Layouts
There are several new features in CS6 that are intended to take same of the drudgery out of repurposing content for different page sizes or for output to a variety of devices with different screen sizes, resolutions, and aspect ratios.
The new Alternate Layout feature helps you create two or more layouts in a single InDesign file. For example, you could have a facing pages layout for a 6×9 inch book, a 5×5 inch book, and a 7×8 inch book all in a single InDesign file. One advantage of having the layouts in a single file is that you can use three other new features (Liquid Layout, Linked Objects, and the Content Collector/Content Placer) to help keep your content current in all your versions. — KG
Liquid Layout
Liquid Layout is intended to help reduce the amount of work it takes to reformat pages, or portions of pages, for different sizes and aspect ratios. (See this post for a sneak peak Adobe presented last October.) It’s ideal for quickly adapting layouts between multiple sizes of tablet screens, or creating a series of ads at different sizes, or even for reformatting a book into a different trim size. There is some configuration and setup involved, so it is particularly beneficial for template-driven, repetitive workflows.
To use liquid layout, you apply one of five different “rules” to page items that specify how these objects should react (move or resize) when you change the page dimensions. You test these rules by temporarily tugging on the page edges with the Page tool. Once you have the rules established, then you either permanently change the page size with the Page tool and the Control bar, or create an Alternate Layout with a new page size, telling InDesign to apply your liquid layout rules as the alternate layout is created. — KG
Linked Content
The Linked Content feature was introduced in CS5.5, but taken a lot further in CS6. This feature allows you to have “parent” content that is linked to “child” content that can appear in several places in a single document, or spread across several documents. When the parent content is edited, you are given the option to update the content in all the other locations.
This is a pretty simple concept. But the complexity increases when you edit the content or appearance of some of the child text or one of the child objects. When the parent text or object is later edited, what should happen to the edits that you made to the child text or objects? Some of these local edits can be preserved, and some will be stripped out when the parent text or object is edited, depending on the settings in the Link Options dialog box. — KG
Content Collector/Content Placer tools
Continuing with the theme of making it easier to reuse content, the new Content Collector and Content Placer tools aim to make it easier to quickly copy content between page, alternate layouts, or documents.
When you choose either of these tools, a new interface element called the Content Conveyor appears on the screen.
At its simplest, these tools and the conveyor behave like copy and paste, but you get an unlimited number of “clipboards”. In other words, you can “collect” a dozen different objects from one location, and then “place” them one by one in another location. The way that the tools and the conveyor work together makes it very quick and efficient to collect and place lots of different page objects. — KG
On-object Link Status and Control
Since linked content is a lot more important in CS6, the application gives you a more obvious way to tell when a story or an object is out-of-date. By default, a linked story or object shows an on-object Link Badge. (If you don’t want to see it, turn it off in View > Extras > Show/Hide Link Badge.)
If the story or object becomes out-of-date because its parent has changed its text or appearance, you’ll see a warning triangle. Double-clicking will update the link. Option/Alt-clicking takes you to the Links panel. —Steve
Primary Text Frame
You can designate a text frame on the master page as the Primary Text Frame. (This replaces the Master Text Frame from earlier versions which never really worked the way you wanted to.)
When you apply a different master page to your layout page, the story in the Primary Text Frame flows into the Primary Text Frame, following its shape and location from the new master page. And you no longer need to override a Primary Text Frame before adding text. This will eliminate a constant source of confusion for newcomers. —Steve
Text Frames that Auto-Size
The end to text frame oversets? Debuting as a new tab in the Text Frame Options dialog box, the Auto-Size controls lets you set a text frame to automatically resize itself based on the amount of text it has, dynamically moving frame edges to fit as you edit the contents. You can specify that the auto-sizing is restricted to Height Only, Width Only, or both; choose which side(s) are allowed to move and which should stay locked down, and set a minimum height and width. Auto-Size settings can be included in an Object Style, too. Think of all those sidebars, captions, and pull-quotes that you never have to worry about oversetting or manually closing up empty space as you edit the text! Very easy to get spoiled by this one. —AMC
Flexible Columns
It’s a fact that long lines of text are more difficult to read than shorter ones. This is most evident in newspapers. While InDesign has long had the ability to set number of columns and the widths of those columns in a text frame, changing those attributes meant manually opening the Text Frame Options dialog box and setting those numbers.
Wouldn’t it be great if, as you changed the size of the frame, the widths of the columns adjusted? Now they can. Just set the default width for a column and should you need to adjust the width of the frame the column widths will adjust accordingly. This ties in nicely to alternate and liquid layouts where you could have a portrait and landscape orientation in one file. — Bob
Improved EPUB 2 Export, new EPUB 3 Export
A new dropdown menu in the EPUB Export Options dialog box gives you a choice of export formats: EPUB 2.01, EPUB 3, and an enticingly-named ”EPUB 3 with Layout.”
First let’s get that EPUB 3.0 with Layout one out of the way: As with a few other new commands in InDesign CS6, this option is more of a promise than a working feature. Choosing it results in a warning that it’s an “experimental” format they’re working on, aimed toward “adaptation of layouts across different mobile devices,” (so the “layout” in the name does not mean a fixed-layout EPUB), and currently only “specific Adobe viewer technologies” will work with this format, but these viewers are not named and aren’t available (yet). In other words, move on, nothing to see here folks, but we’ll let you know.
New features in EPUB 2.01 (and EPUB 3.0) are more gratifying. First, there’s the existence of the EPUB 3.0 option itself. When you choose it, you’re able to do EPUB 3-only things like create an EPUB with vertical Japanese text and placed HTML and Adobe Edge animations (which use HTML5 and CSS3), and include links to one or more external Javascript files. Exporting a document to EPUB 3.0 results in a valid EPUB 3.0 eBook, including the requisite new TOC.xhtml file and a fall-back TOC.ncx file for EPUB 2.x reading engines. Now all we need is an EPUB reader or device that understands EPUB 3, and we’re all set.
Adobe has added new features and improved the mark-up for EPUB projects in general. You now have much more flexibility when splitting a layout into multiple XHTML files in the EPUB because you can tag one or more paragraph styles to Split Document whenever you export it to EPUB. Tables retain their cell styles (they get converted to CSS) along with column width and minimum row height information. Anchored and inline text frames now retain settings like fill color, border style and width, padding (text insets) and margins for text wrap. You can link to multiple custom CSS files instead of just one. —AMC
Grayscale Preview and Grayscale PDF Export
You can preview a color file in Grayscale on the screen, and then export to a grayscale PDF right from InDesign. It’s pretty simple, but it’s something that many users have been asking for for a decade. — KG
Align to Key Object
This control, which has previously only been in Illustrator, now makes its debut in InDesign. It allows you to choose which object in your selection you want your other objects to align with. To tell InDesign which object in a multiple selection is the key object, just click it. Its selection border gets an extra hit of pixels, making it easy to spot in a crowd. — KG
The Little Things
User Interface tweaks: INDESIGN HAS STOPPED YELLING AT US ALL BY DEFAULT. Whew! Panel names and workspaces are now displayed in Title Case instead of ALLCAPS. Also, there are more subtle tweaks: You can collapse panels back into the dock by clicking on their names, just like we used to do in CS4. Also, panels have a gripper bar at the bottom for resizing, close buttons are now xs instead of circles, and anchored object controls now match the layer of the frame they’re attached to. —Mike
Placeholder text language options: When you select the Type > Fill with Placeholder Text, hold Command/Ctrl to select from a list of nine languages for the placeholder text, including Roman, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese. But sadly, no bacon ipsum, Elvish, or Klingon yet. –Mike
Split Window: The Split Window icon, located in the far bottom right of each document window does one simple thing—it splits the window into two separate views. This provides a quick, straightforward way to see two different views of your layout at once. You can zoom in on the page in one view, and see the entire page in the other view. Or, you can work on a master page in one view and see page six in the second view. Or, view your horizontal-orientation tablet layout in one view, and the vertical-orientation alternate layout in the other view. — KG
Complex Calculations in Dialog Boxes and Panels: You can now enter something like 45/6*79 and InDesign will calculate the correct answer. –Mike
Digital Publishing workspace: The “Interactive” workspace has been updated to “Digital Publishing,” which includes the the Liquid Layout panel and the DPS Folio Builder panel. You will still need to download the latest DPS tools separately; once you do, then this workspace will also contain the Folio Producer panel. –Mike
Export to PNG (with transparency): You can export a selection, a page range, or a document to PNG. –Mike
Extension Manager Sets: You can create and manage sets of extensions through the CS6 Extension Manager just like the old feature of plug-in sets. —Mike
Hunspell Dictionary default: For most languages, the Hunspell open source dictionaries are now the default dictionaries for spelling and hyphenation. These are the same dictionaries used by Mac OS X, OpenOffice, and browsers like Chrome and Firefox. —Mike
Accurate screen sizing: Break out your old pica rulers and hold them up to the screen. InDesign CS6 does a much better job of matching on screen sizes to real life. —Mike
Keeps with Spans and Splits: Simply put, the keeps functions for paragraphs (Keep with Next, Keep lines together, etc.) now work on paragraphs that are set to span columns or split. Even though we’re classifying it under “little things,” we’ve been informed that getting this to work was actually quite the programming challenge, involving hundreds of hours. Huzzahs to the software engineers! —Mike
Recent Fonts List: You can now display a list of up to 50 recently-used fonts in the Control, Character, and Glyphs panels, and at the top of the installed fonts list in the Type > Font menu. —Mike
Save as IDML: While the process of downsaving via IDML hasn’t changed, the folks at Adobe have tried to take some of the mystery out of process by adding IDML to the options in the Save As dialog box, and including a message about how the downsaving process works. —Mike
PANTONE PLUS SERIES color swatch libraries: The PANTONE libraries included with InDesign have been updated with the new PANTONE PLUS SERIES colors. – KG
Name Ranges in XLSX files: A bug prevented named ranges in Excel 2007 and later from displaying in the place dialog. The only way to place named ranges was to save it back to XLS. This bug has been fixed in CS6.-Bob
Export to Interactive As Pages: InDesign CS5 and 5.5 insisted that when you choose File > Export > PDF (Interactive), you would always export spreads. You can now choose between exporting pages or spreads. The default is spreads. —Steve
Package files includes overlay assets: With CS5 and CS5.5 anything used only in an overlay such as an HTML page or an audio controller image was ignored in the package process. CS6 creates an Overlay Assets folder for these objects. –Bob
For More Information
Of course, this short article only scratches the surface of each of these features. If you want to go deeper, check out:
- Issue 47 of InDesign Magazine. This not only has a great roundup of CS6 features by Mike Rankin, but also includes great InDepth features about Alternate Layouts and Liquid Layout by Claudia McCue and Pariah Burke. Subscribers will get this issue immediately; it sometimes takes a handful of days to get it available for non-subscribers.
- Adobe TV has a ton of movies ready to play on all the CS6 products. [Sorry, public link to come ASAP.]
- Anne-Marie’s InDesign CS6 New Features videos on lynda.com are now available. There are lots more InDesign CS6 video titles coming up there, we’ll add them here as they go live.
And, of course, we’ll be covering CS6 for months to come here at InDesignSecrets. Be sure to check back periodically for the newest info. Of course, we won’t forget about users of CS5 and earlier… we know that not everyone can upgrade right away.
Just started using InDesign CS6 today. Disappointed there is no ability to group color swatches. Or did I miss it?
Have used David’s trick of creating a “division” swatch but was hoping for a group “tool” similar to Paragraph and Character styles.
Also opening panels seems painfully slow.
@Terryclifton: Nope, no way to group color swatches yet. Not sure why opening panels would be slow. Often, it takes longer the first time you do something in ID (because in many cases, each feature in ID is actually a little program that has to launch in the background).
There are big pluses and some minuses in the new release.
Plus: Being able to turn on soft proofing while creating a grayscale newspaper ad using full-color assets, so what I see is really what I will get is a big time saver.
Plus: Mini Bridge promises to be quite useful, finally, in its new position.
Plus: A book panel now opens ON TOP of the Welcome pane, instead of hiding behind it, which was one of my early feature requests. Little things make a difference!
Plus: Bridge now has a context menu item for “Place…” with your choice of program, another of my early FRs.
Plus: The content conveyor rocks when I have multiple items to place across multiple ads and they’re not all going in at the same size.
Minus: It’s a teeth-gritting moment when you discover that hitting Esc drops an item from the place gun AND the content conveyor.
Minus: The fact that “Fill Frame Proportionally” now automatically centers an image is a royal pain in the you-know-where. That has to be an error that slipped in late, because I don’t recall it during prerelease and 9 times out of 10 it’s not what I want (and the “Center” icon is only a click away when I do need it).
Minus: The new font picker is painfully slow to use, which more than offsets the gain of “recently used fonts.” They are usually off the screen at the top of the list, requiring big mouse movements and sl-o-o-ow scrolling to reach.
We win some, and we lose some. I’ll be pitching heavily for better long doc/book features next time out. I already got some traction with my passionate pitch for an option to migrate all preferences, kbsc’s and workspaces to a new version.
RE: Pantone + swatch libraries… If your books are the older versions, you can copy over the older swatch libraries; they’re found in the application folder and then Presets/Swatch Libraries.
(For myself, I noticed that process coated SWOP #190-1 is not represented in the + library — at least not under the same name!)
@Mike and Lindsey: Markdown, and its derived brethren, is used so far to generate HTML. The document model of HTML is different from InDesign’s, so it’s not (um) preferable to write a one-to-one conversion tool, as it would be bursting at the seams with “local overrides”. Think Italics inside a code fragment inside a bold header.
(Which makes me wonder about how FramedWeb does with this.)
In the mean, I had a little fun writing a Markdown interpreter for InDesign in Javascript — as far as reasonably possible. It doesn’t do too bad on the Markdown documents I could find, and I even had some time left to stuff in a few extras!
You can read all about it on my web site.
Looks like when exporting a Indesign file to a SWF / HTML file the readers still have no option to zoom in or out whilst in a web browser which is very frustrating.
Does anyone know anyway of getting round this that doesn’t involve weeks of coding or buying some very expensive plugin?
When you say, “And you no longer need to override a Primary Text Frame before adding text,” I thought you were describing something new: that I could type directly into a Master text from when it was used on a page, without overriding the text frame. It doesn’t seem to work that way. I still must override to begin typing (from scratch). I could always plea text into the frame without overriding—still can. What did you mean, really?
Rick, it is something new and it does work as described.
1. Create a new doc, making sure to enable “Primary Text Frame” in the New document dialog box.
2. Click inside page 1 and start typing.
You may have been caught by a subtlety: Master pages can have one or more “regular” master page text frames — and these will need to be overridden as usual on the doc pages — but now they can ALSO have a Primary text frame — and this does not have to be overridden. On the master page, a new icon appears below the In Port for text frames; if it has an arrow in it, it’s a Primary text frame.
The only way to add “regular” master page text frames is by hand-editing the master page; you can’t put them there via the New Document dialog box. Or if you’ve converted an older file to CS6, I’d assume its master page text frames remain “regular” master page text frames.
Thank you!
The arrow made the difference!
Amazing product, CS6 has changed the landscape
http://tv.adobe.com/watch/cs6-creative-cloud-feature-tour-for-design/getting-started-with-the-new-liquid-layout-and-alternate-layout-features-in-indesign-cs6/?sdid=JUMNA
“Keeps with Spans and Splits:”…Hallelujah! I had to check once I read this…keep options with tables and text outside the tables works now!
This will save me many hours of monotonous checking as things reflow. I’ve gleefully removed the column breaks I resorted to to force tables to keep with following text…Thank you!
I’ve been struggling to align a re-recording dialog for this video I shot at school and a friend suggested I try the new Audition CS6 from Adobe with this new ADR tool – http://tv.adobe.com/watch/cs6-creative-cloud-feature-tour-for-video/how-to-use-auto-speech-alignment-in-audition/?sdid=JUMNF I have to say it’s made my life so much easier. You can get the demo from here – http://www.adobe.com/in/downloads/?sdid=JUMTN and trust me, it’ll save you a lot of time.
Photoshop – Working with vector-based shape layers
Vector-based shape layers now behave very much like vector shapes in Illustrator, InDesign, and other Adobe applications. Learn how to apply fills, including None, as well as solid, gradient, and dashed strokes. Plus, you have stacking and alignment controls, as well as the option to snap the edges to the pixel grid.
http://tv.adobe.com/watch/learn-photoshop-cs6/working-with-vector-based-shape-layers/
Photoshop – Previewing shadows and reflections
3D has been altogether revamped in Photoshop CS6. One of the best enhancements is the program’s ability to preview shadows and reflections before you render the scene, particularly those cast onto the ground plane. You can even drag a shadow to change the angle of a light.
http://tv.adobe.com/watch/learn-photoshop-cs6/previewing-shadows-and-reflections/
@Siddartha and @Resha: I don’t understand why you’re mentioning Photoshop and Audition. It’s nice that they have those features, but this is an InDesign discussion! :)
To the person who admonished us to be grateful: I too remember the bad old days.
However, here’s why we feel ripped off:
The publishing industry is so interlinked, that if one person somewhere in the long chain upgrades, everybody else has to upgrade, whether they can afford to or not. The world of commerce (including publishing) is now all about “outsourcing”, not only offshore, but to previously laid-off staff, who now, as “freelancers”, have to buy their own computers and software upgrades.
It is extremely galling to fork out for upgrade after upgrade and simply find the same old bugs that sour your life.
When I upgraded to CS4, they actually sent me an email asking if they could shadow my work, to see how I use InDEsign. Of course I agreed and was soooo chuffed, believing that all the stuff that drive me mad would be noticed and resolved. Nope. I’m now on CS6 and up against the same annoying bugs that drive me mad.
That’s why we feel ripped off.
Exporting as an e-brochure can only be done as an swf file in CS5. I’ve heard that in CS6 there is an option to export as HTML5. Is that correct?
@Gary: Nope.
@Robertw
I agree with Stix Hart about Links problem. InDesign is smart enough to find links automatically if the document is placed beside the Links folder. All linked images should be in the Links folder (and not in any other sub-folders in Links folder).
Form fields limitations: I would prefer to use Acrobat Pro for forms until Adobe can come out with full features in InDesign including calculations.
I used to work for a print magazine doing design and layout and I always hated my writers for making last minute changes. Whether it was due to copy checks or copy fitting, it’s just pissing off to rework the layout, specially if the copy is linked to another page. I’m so glad this new feature in InDesign – http://tv.adobe.com/watch/cs6-creative-cloud-feature-tour-for-design/linked-content-liquid-layout-in-indesign-cs6/?sdid=JYNWX has been created. Every designer will be dancing! I bought online from here – http://shop.adobe.com/ to test out its effectiveness with my blog and I have to admit, even the whole liquid and adaptive layouts stuff is pure gold!
Wondering if any of you out there have been using the new forms options in InDesign CS6. I have been working on some forms and created a bunch of text fields for people to fill in. What I discovered was that when I exported and tried to put text in the fields in Adobe Acrobat Reader, it wouldn’t save the form (it will let you print but not save). The filled out form can be saved in the full version of Adobe Acrobat, but with Reader I am having difficulties. On Adobe’s website, they say that filling in fields and saving is possible in Reader, the document just needs to be “rights enabled”. I am having a difficult time figuring out how to export my PDF from InDesign CS6 so that it is rights enabled. Has anyone run into this before? How do I remedy this?
@Kelly: Yes, InDesign does not, by itself, enable Reader rights. You need to do that in Acrobat Pro. In Acrobat 9, you choose Advanced > Extend Features in Acrobat Reader. In Acrobat X, I think it’s part of the Save As process.
After much investigation and experimentation I found that what you have listed does solve my issue. You have to create an Interactive PDF in InDesign. Then open the PDF in Acrobat Pro and File> Save As > Reader Extended PDF > Enable Additional Features! That’s it! Too bad it can’t be done directly from InDesign, but this process isn’t too bad, at least I know how now!
Hi, I’m wondering if anyone else has noticed the awful “dragging/repositioning of items” functionality that seems to have gotten worse in CS6? Say you have an item selected and you want to drag it to an exact area onscreen, zoomed way in, it used to be that it would dim and you could do that. Now, not only can you not see where you’re dragging it to because there’s no pointer of object feedback, but everything seems to be snapping to an invisible grid. This is with all of the snapping, smart guides etc turned off. HELP.
@Jamie: I’m not sure if this is what you’re talking about, but try opening Preferences and, in the Interface pane, set the Live Screen Drawing to Delayed.
What I would like to ask:
The last software I purchased was Web preium cs3.3. I have had a daughter since then. I am getting back into web design again now.. Became a Certified Internet Webmaster in 2010.
I have seem a web hosting package that includes dreamweavwer cs5.5 within it. However I have a few wonders? Most of my other software is cs3.3 – Is this going to cause issues?
Is dreamweaver cs5.5 backwards compatible.. ie can I use flash, firworks cs3.3 etc along with dreamweaver cs5.5?
This will be a big decision in which package I will choose. If its going to cause integration issues and coding issues then I shall just forget the package that includes dreamweaver and stay with my webpremium cs3.3 … Backwards software is better than update dreamweaver no others right?
@Debs: I’m sorry, but I’m not sure if this is really the best forum for you. it sounds like you’re asking about Dreamweaver, but we focus on InDesign here.
Hi David, Steve and Mike.
I have a question about Indesign CS6:
Does anyone know if there a feature than enables the export of an indesign document into a format that is similar to the Amazon Book preview format? I like it how you can read the first chapter of a book and click on the corner of edge of the page to turn it. I want it to work so that people can for example read a free book, a sample chapter without the ability to copy text.
So it needs to be a read only document that can be embedded into a website? I have been able to export an Indesign document to a SWF format (Flash) which looks great, (like a book where you can click on the curled-up corner to turn a page), but it doesn’t display on Mac devices (iphones, iPads etc..)
Thanks in advance
Hi guys, yes loving CS6. Totally agree it would be amazing to have Illustrator built into Indesign. The increase in efficiency is amazing!
ok great. But have they done anything to improve footnotes? how about endnotes?
i wish you can have severa footnote formats. say one style is numbered and another style is lettered.
also. you have to have a continuous text frame for footnotes to work sequentially. a new text frame means footnotes start at one again.
footnotes to work inside tables as well. you can’t just put footnotes in tables in cs5.
for master pages, it would be nice to have an option to use 2 or more master pages on a page. that way, you have less master page styles. this is besise the ability to base one master page from another master page.
master page can be layered on a page. say if your content in page 1 is layer 1, you can assign layer 2 to the master page on page 1. that way, if you have a full spread image and still wants to show page numbers or elements inside the master page, they can be shown, without having to use effects to the image just to reveal the contents of the master page.
thanks for the tut
Did I miss a reference to a table footnote workaround in all of these comments? Has anyone successfully placed a footnote reference in a table? TIA
@Daniel: Nope.
Hi,
Please someone let me know to design the following needs.
I am designing a flipbook and saved it with swf extension.
1. I need a text box where I should be able to input the desired page number.
2. On entering after the input is given, I must go to the desired page directly.
@Sruthi: I don’t think you could do that with InDesign. You’d probably need to do it in Flash Pro. But another idea is to create the flipbook, then use a tool like eDocker:
http://www.edocker.fi/index.php/en
or
http://indesignsecrets.com/forum/general-indesign-topics/page-flips-on-facing-pages-book
@David: Thank u soo much David.. I ll try that……
can someone tell me how to create a Search field for use in an app produced with InDesign?
thanks
@aswan: I don’t think that’s possible in a DPS app at this time.
thank you david – same answer for in an epub made in ID CS6 ?
Talking about the footnotes formatting we use to have in some books layout, we design, more than eight or ten footnotes in one page wich takes a lot of white spaces in the bottom of the page.
So if its possible to allow us to split the footnote raws up to tow or three colomns, preserving the automatic footnotes flowing in the text.
Thax for regarding this message.
Sincerely yours
Majed A. M.
Art directing manager
Dbouk int. for printing & general trading L.T.D.
Lebanon – Beirut
000961 70 743117
00961 70 416922
I like InDesign CS6, there are several new and I did not know from the reviews above, but it was very helpful.
by the way is there anyone here who can help me trouble finding a complete ebook InDesign CS6?
thanks
Hi,
I love the new easy ability to export to PDF form with editable text fields.
Does anyone know how to predefine the formatting for the text that will be entered in that box in the pdf? The only thing I see you can control is the point size.
Thanks in advance,
Joe
If only we could import svg files and have them be editable without jumping through a lot of hoops.
New to CS6 and struggling with primary text frames. There seems to be an anomaly: if I have a document with two facing master pages, I can only designate ONE PRIMARY FRAME FOR THE WHOLE SPREAD. But if I make a new document with ‘Primary Text Frames’ turned on, I get one for each page! But there seems no way with an existing document of making both master pages have primary frames. Consequently the text flow is only on the recto or verso, and the other blank. Or I have to start again with a new doc and turn on primary frames. Anyone else encountered this? Assume just me being dumb. Thanks.
@Belmondo: This does work for me okay. I make a new facing pages document without primary text frame; I go to master page A, draw one frame on the left and one on the right. Then choose Selection tool, click on the one on the left and then click on the primary text frame adornment/icon in upper-left corner (when it is a primary text frame it has little black arrows). Then I select the one on the right and do the same thing. No?
Thanks David. When I do exactly as you describe, I can only assign one or other as a primary frame – so when I’ve assigned the right one, the left is now back to being a normal frame.
However, I do now seem to be able to make it work, by threading the two frames on the master pages. I tried this previously, but was holding shift when I placed the text, to auto-flow it, which didn’t work: if I shift-clicked on the first frame on page 1, all subsequent r-h pages were threaded, left ones blank. Not sure why. Now I’m placing it without shift, and everything flows beautifully.
best site for indesign en general thanks for all the tips keep the good work
Hello All!
I was hoping to see a feature to enable expanding and contracting content. So for example, if I were writing a step-by-step guide to document a process, I can hide the details underneath each step and the user can click the heading to show or hide the content underneath. It’s roumored that Word 2013 has this functionality, but I’d rather use InDesign.