InDesign CS3 Beyond the Basics Released at lynda.com
March 7th, 2008
Please forgive the self-indulgent announcement, but a number of readers and listeners have asked me when my InDesign CS3 Beyond the Basics video title would be available from lynda.com. The answer is: Today. I just got the word that it’s live at this Web address.
If you don’t yet have a subscription to lynda.com and you’re not in the mood to buy the DVD, you’re welcome to watch all 10 hours of the video instruction by signing up for a free one-week subscription at lynda.com/IDsecrets.
The Beyond the Basics title picks up where my InDesign CS3 Essential Training title left off, and covers a wide range of topics, including:
- Color management (color settings, profiles, working with images)
- Long document features (books, TOC, page numbering, indexing)
- Interactive PDF features (movies, sounds, buttons)
- XML (tagging, importing, exporting)
- Automation features (data merge, scripts, plug-ins)
- Preferences (a rundown of all the important features in the all the panes of the Preferences dialog box)
- and more…
I want to be clear that this title is not totally comprehensive. Even between the two titles, there is much I had to omit. For example, I have a chapter on XML, but I’m just covering the basics; there’s no way I could delve as deep as this book in just a few movies. That said, I feel confident that this info will get people up and running with the core information they need to know in all these areas.
Other Options
We would be remiss if we didn’t also mention the other video training options available on the market. For example, Total Training has some good videos on InDesign, as does VTC.
Terry White also produced a couple hours worth of video training on a few subjects for KelbyTraining. Unfortunately, they used exactly the same name as my title (Beyond the Basics), even though lynda.com has been using this title for years. I believe this can only lead to confusion and dilution in the marketplace, and I have no idea why they would choose that, but perhaps that is for lawyers to work out. (Terry was great, and told me that he would ask them to choose a different name, but that back in January, and nothing has changed.)
But whatever the case, I hope you’ll give my title a peek and see if you like it. Enjoy!
FINALLY!
David, I’m taking your BtB course now, and it is, as always, excellent, and I
m learning & re-learning lots of useful stuff. Congrats on finally getting this course online!
BUT: I am continually annoyed by a linguistic faux pas of yours (which is enormously widespread), namely using the term “font” where the right term is “(type)face”. I won’t insult you by explaining in detail what the difference is, as I fully expect you to actually know that quite well — but rest assured I shall manage to find some other way to insult you if you keep up this bad, bad linguistic practice.
Oh Klaus, I know what you mean, but after all these years, I’ve chosen my battles… and that’s one I let slide back in the early ’90s. See my Desktop Publisher’s Survival Kit from back then (if you can find an old copy in English, German, or Romanian). All languages evolve over time, and there is simply no functional difference between typeface and font in the 21st century (in how the words are used).
You might as well rail against my standardizing on 72 points per inch instead of 72.27. Or the inexplicable rolling of my “r”s whenever I say “CS3″ as though I was born in Argentina. (Anne-Marie can’t wait for CS4 just so I’ll stop doing that.)
You can insult me if you must, but I doubt it’ll change my mind. Besides, your energy is better spent trying to save the few type words that are slipping away that we may be able to save. For example, the proper meaning of “widow” and “orphan,” which is too often generalized into applying to almost any typographic problem.
Oh David, my good man, your reply opens up a can of worms! But as I don’t like worms, I won’t pursue this matter further here — except to say “I strongly disagree, because to think precisely and act sensibly we *do* need to distinguish between ‘font’ and ‘typeface.’”
As for “widows” and “orphans,” I am, as always, all in favor of battling to preserve terms which help us to think clearly — and those do. So I support your cause. (Although I have myself, on some sad occasions, made the error of switching around the meaning of “orphan” and “widow” — for which I remain duly ashamed.)
Klaus and David, that was wonderful. I, like David, have dropped some battles over the years (data/datum) but will never give up on the occasional reminder. My personal “pull-out-my-hair” peeve is the popular trend of using nouns as verbs. Would anyone like to conference??? I grant Klaus a major point for precision and sensibility. Knowing what something is and where the term originated is often both fascinating and essential (upper case and lower case being a case in point [in more ways than one]).
Back to the original point of this post…I think I will check out your videos but someone would have to knock me unconscious for a very long time in order to pry the Real World books out of my hands. I think that I own six of them now and they are great resources. The books cover so much of “what I didn’t have time to learn while I was learning programs on the fly” that I consider them absolutely invaluable.
David, didn’t you tell AM that you will be referring to the next version of ID as CS3 plus one?
Jennie, ah, good point! CS3+1. Thanks very much on the comments about Real World InDesign. But you know, there are some things that are better seen than read about, and some folks just learn better with reading. Fear not, I will continue working on both titles.
As long as we’re on the topic I’ll throw out the one that bugs me the most…PMS.
Pantone dropped that spec a long long time ago.
Thanks, Jennie — you can “con” me anytime, sweetie!
I go so far back that I own David’s Real World QuarXPress from around 1994 . . . I think it’s maybe the first edition? But I’m now a huge fan of the Lynda.com videos (and the KelbyTraining.com ones are sometimes great, too) so I’ve almost stopped buying books on software — learning from video tuts is so much more time-efficient. If you’ve not sampled David’s or Anne-Marie’s Lynda.com titles, then run over there and do so NOW.