December 24 2008 • 9:08 AM
InDesignSecrets Podcast 093
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- Welcome to new contibutor, James Fritz
- InDesignSecrets on Twitter!
- The state of CS4: Who is upgrading?
- InDesign CS4 ACE Exam — by InDesignSecrets
- Right-to-left (RTL) text without InDesign ME
- The problem with the PICT image format
- Free Download: Guide to Special Characters in InDesign
- Obscure InDesign Feature of the Week: Hide Master Items
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Links mentioned in this podcast:
All about James Fritz
Follow the InDesignSecrets Twitter feed
Adobe’s press release mentioning slower CS4 sales
Learn about becoming an ACE
Bob Levine’s post about RTL text plug-ins for CS4
More ways to set RTL text in any ID version (read the comments!)
David’s rant about PICT and other formats
We found an interesting online image format converter
Our Guide to Special (Show Hidden) Characters in InDesign
All about James Fritz
Follow the InDesignSecrets Twitter feed
Adobe’s press release mentioning slower CS4 sales
Learn about becoming an ACE
Bob Levine’s post about RTL text plug-ins for CS4
More ways to set RTL text in any ID version (read the comments!)
David’s rant about PICT and other formats
We found an interesting online image format converter
Our Guide to Special (Show Hidden) Characters in InDesign
In regards to twitter, if you type exactly 140 characters it is called a twoosh.
Upgrade cycle too short. Many users need new plugins and I believe developers need more time to build and really test them!
>Upgrade cycle to short
Agree! Geez, slow down…
Hey, good show — and Merry Xmas from Norway! Since you’re all so snow-bound and freezing in Washington and Illinois — maybe you should take a trip up here? We have zero snow and a comfy cool-but-not-cold temperature here in Oslo — it’s like late fall.
Aha, so you two are now going to be our ACE tormentors for CS4! Since I just passed my ID CS3 ACE I’ll of course be taking the re-certification exam within a few months — can’t say I greatly look forward to that, but as it’s supposedly centered around only The New CS4 Stuff it might be endurable. Please post new about the CS4 exams as soon as they’re out. And if I flunk . . . . well, I now know where my tormentors live . . .
I think that corporations like Adobe might do well to recognize that we consumers of their (fine) products are not like money trees that can be shaken every 18 to 24 months. You can’t have it both ways–laying off 600 people AND decrying the slow sales of Creative Suite 4. What would happen if the corporation were more in tune with its customers and introduce incremental upgrades over a five-year period? I believe that would help build brand loyalty; there needs to be iterations of Creative Suite between major upgrades that honor the consuming public—especially in recessionary times. InDesign has been the most expensive of all the page layout programs to own precisely because of its development/pricing policy.
(I started with PageMaker on a PC, then QuarkXPress on a Mac, and now InDesign on a Mac at work and at home; also, I used to run Quark/Illustrator/Photoshop on 10 Mbs of RAM on a Mac LC.)
Too little to fail,
Douglas Arnold
Boston
I think Adobe shot themselves in the foot by marketing the suite so strongly. When CS2 came out I was telling people don’t buy the suite unless you need at least two programs to be the most updated versions. I need InDesign and Illustrator. However, I only really need the most updated version of InDesign. I don’t use Illustrator enough to justify me upgrading every 18 months.
What is happening now is that even people that would pay the price to update one of the programs because the features pay for themselves, as David said, they are not willing to pay to upgrade the entire suite.
Oh, and David, applying the None master page gets rid of all master page items on a page. So the only real reason to use Hide Master Items would be to temporarily hide if they are too loud as you mentioned.
Heavy sigh . . . here the Luddites go again, with more protests AGAINST PROGRESS. Yes, that cancer cure that’s maybe coming soon — let’s delay that, too, after all, we live forever, right, so wasting time waiting for progress never hurts, right?
(Sorry for the somewhat bitter sarcasm there, but sometimes sarcasm is the only argument against human follies.)
Anne-Marie/David,
Congratulations on your hard work on the ACE exam for ID CS4! Interesting that Adobe didn’t want to do the work themselves. Presumably, the only people that will take the test are the ones that can afford to purchase the upgrade to ID CS4.
Patron saint of the little people a/k/a
Questioner of “Is it all about the money?”
Doug Arnold
Boston
P.S. Happy New Year! Snow shovels for Seattle; hot toddies for Chicago!
Heh … Thanks Doug, that hot toddy is hitting the spot!
Today it was about 20 degrees (farenheit) and felt positively balmy … no need to zip the coat, etc.
Trying hard to convert to metric, ever since I read that even John Adams tried to convert America 200+ years ago. Brother-in-law finally explained Celsius to me: Forget trying to do accurate conversions. Instead just remember that 0 = very cold (ice), 10 = chilly, 20 = nice, 30 = very warm, 40 = very hot.
Meanwhile, 60 cm of snow here (10x what we normally get).
@Fred: You are correct about applying None master page to the first page. That’s probably a better idea than just hiding the master… unless there’s a reasonable chance that you’ll need those master page items again later (if the pages reflow). But just picking nits here.
Here in Australia the federal government, as a measure to stimulate the national economy, made a grant of $AUD1,400 to each single aged pensioner, which I am (different amounts for couples, which I am not). I was convincing myself that, being retired, I could not afford the upgrade to CS4 when the government made its announcement.
Immediately I placed my order for the CS4 upgrade, thus sending about 2/3 of the grant to Adobe and boosting the US economy, rather than our own. Maybe it is an extravagance but, since the government is paying for it, what the heck? I love the new features in InDesign CS4 and in Photoshop CS4 but do not use the other programs quite as much, particularly as I am now retired and have less use for Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Acrobat, et al.
Otherwise, I would not have upgraded. I hope my little contribution to Adobe’s coffers helped keep someone employed. If so, please remember that Australia’s economy suffered for the cause!
I think that a lot of people have the same issues with the CS4 upgrade that my Mac user group does. I publish our newsletter (using InDesign since we won a copy at MWNY 2000). Since production of the newsletter also involves use of Photoshop, Illustrator, and Acrobat, we’ve been going with the suite. We have dutifully upgraded with each new version, but we’re balking at this one. While the upgrade price is less than the list price of the suite, it’s still expensive and difficult to justify based on what you get with the new version.
I’ve always felt that if pricing was made a little more reasonable, that profits would actually increase due to higher sales. I think Microsoft proved this theory when they released their student and teacher version of Office and their sales soared.
Perhaps such a change in thinking could also result in a reduction of the onerous DRM/Activation schemes Adobe uses which only seem to punish the honest software customer, while doing little to deter piracy.
So, will our group upgrade? It’s too early to tell. I’ve been asked to justify it and haven’t really been able to come up with very many “gotta have it” features. Maybe I’ll see something at the Adobe Macworld breakfast to change my mind. Time will tell.
I would upgrade, actually I did upgrade when CS3.3 came out. I bought it in the last week of July for £590. Had I bought it in August or later, I would have got a free upgrade from 3.3 to 4 because it was so soon to the release of CS4. Now I am reluctant to have to pay another £592 ($862) for CS4. I admit that I would have been happy to upgrade for free, but am annoyed at my bad luck/timing. I think that I’d rather wait until CS5.
Sorry, just catching up to this podcast. I did upgrade to CS4 but it was because the price was too good to pass up. I think you CS,CS2 kids can still get the CS3 upgrade price until the end of this week or was it last week? I will say, my wee iMac G5 is chugging with so much stuff on it but at least I can telecommute now. If it wasnt for the great price, I wouldnt have done it.
Klaus, your post makes me assume that you have loads of cash coming in, even in this tough world economy, if we are all cry babies for worrying about the cost of a frequent upgrade timeline. Good for you. Maybe you can open your lovely home for homeless designers someday.
For the rest of us, we wait for every other (or in my case, third) upgrade. Cheers and happy Festivus, yall.