This Week in InDesign Articles, Number 53

David Blatner

5

It’s a beautiful day in the InDesign universe! I’ve had my head down working on the Print and ePublishing Conference, which is going to be an amazing show. If you’re anywhere within 12,000 miles (20,000 km) of Washington DC, you definitely don’t want to miss this one!

But in the meantime, it’s great fun to come up for air and see so many articles and videos popping up about InDesign! Check these out.

• There are all kinds of reasons to use patterns in InDesign… here’s an example: Using Teacup PatternMaker to Mimic Knitted Garter Stitch.
• Rufus Deuchler points out all the new features in the last few versions of InDesign. I don’t know what schnickschnack is, but it sounds tasty!
• This is both hysterical and amazing: Qwiki on InDesign
• Here’s a short and sweet tutorial on Quick Masking with the Pen Tool in InDesign. (Just remember to choose View > Display Performance > High Quality first!)
• If you like book publishing biz data, you can’t get better than this from O’Reilly.
• Troubleshooting EPUB files: Here’s a great step by step on how Liz fixed an EPUB document. These kinds of real world examples often help when you’re trying to figure out why your document isn’t working right.
• Marijan Tompa keeps writing really cool scripts to help your InDesign workflow! Check out Add Layer Sets to Document and Easy way to UnEmbed all Embedded links!
• Most$5 magazines on the ipad go for $5 or so. Vogue magazine has launched a smaller magazine… just “cover stories,” based on the adobe DPS software, priced at 99 cents.
• Everyone is going EPUB! Or, will be… Japan?s Book Publishers Decide To Go With EPUB Standard
• Cari Jansen has written up two great blog posts with examples of how to set up an InDesign template for XML import: Part 1 and Part 2.
• Chris Converse wrote a great book/video package on creating interactive content with InDesign. Good excerpt here.
• If you haven’t checked out CreativeEdge yet (home of lots of videos and books, including our books from Peachpit Press), you can get 10 days of free content at CreativeEdge!
• Doyald Young, Logotype Designer, passed away this week. To honor him, lynda.com has made this 40-minute movie about him and his work free to everyone.
• Most of you know you how to save a CS5 document back to CS4, but this video by Russell Viers shows the steps.
• I have raved about the free IndexMatic and IndexBrutal scripts (I even included them in my lynda.com title on cool scripts you should know about). Now, Marc is combining them, plus adding a lot of extra and welcome features in his IndexMatic 2, Beta. The new version is likely to be paid, not free, but it’ll be so worth it!
• Marijan Tompa wrote up this little overview of how Live Corners work in InDesign CS5.
• 8 Steps to Optimize InDesign files for Translation: If you think your document is going to be translated into one or more other languages, these tips are probably good to keep in mind.
• 10 Folding Mistakes That Cost You (Big Time): Trish Witkowski writes yet another awesome roundup of paper-folding best practices!

Enjoy!