What’s New With InDesign CC 2015.2
Adobe has released updates to several important Creative Cloud applications, including InDesign CC 2015.
In their 2015.2 versions, all of the main apps have jettisoned their old Welcome screens in favor of a new Start screen. This new screen makes it easier locate recent files, create new files, manage CC libraries and presets, and access Adobe stock photos and tutorials. Here’s what the Start screen looks like in InDesign:
New InDesign features include several enhancements to CC Libraries, including the following:
- Add all members of a group to a library with one click (including color groups and style groups)
- Add color themes and/or individual swatches to the Swatches panel without having to apply those colors to page objects
- Add multiple styles, swatches, or graphics to a library with one click
- CC libraries can now be searched, finally!
We also have a revamped Color Theme panel:
It’s a little easier to make accessible PDFs, thanks to the new ability to designate a title for the PDF and to display that title in the PDF via a setting in the PDF Export dialog box.
Smaller changes include:
- An increase in the number of recent documents you can display (up to 20)
- New page sizes for Web and Digital Publishing
- The ability to make the Eyedropper take priority over the Color Theme tool (yay!)
A comprehensive review of the new features
In addition to the features above, the new release includes the features announced at Adobe MAX, which Steve Werner covered here a few weeks ago. These include enhancements to the Publish Online service, new features for finding and selecting glyphs, and a special workspace where users of Microsoft Windows touch-enabled devices can quickly sketch out new layouts with gestures, similar to the Adobe Comp CC app.
For a full, deep dive into every new feature of InDesign CC 2015.2, see issue 80 of InDesign Magazine.
Also, be sure to check out the latest version of James Wamser’s Guide to InDesign New Features, which includes the features in this latest release. You can view the guide via Publish Online or download a PDF.
Bug Fixes in InDesign CC 2015.2
The new release of InDesign also sports several welcome bug fixes, addressing problems with crashing, cross-references, data merge, relinking, EPUB, and more.
Macintosh: El Capitan issues
- InDesign no longer crashes on launch when “Automatically hide and show the menu bar” option is enabled.
- Navigation window’s Title Bar is no longer missing in Open/Place dialogs.
- Relink functionality now works properly.
Publish Online
- No more white bounding box when multiplying transparency effects on JPG graphics.
- Ease In/Ease Out animation setting now behaves correctly.
- State actions are now honored in Publish Online export when buttons are anchored in a multi-state object (MSO).
Fonts, Text, Styles, Data Merge
- Previewing a font in dialog box adds font to Recent Font list.
- Users can now use Verdana OTF font from Document Fonts folder
- Fit Frame to Content now works when the last character of the line is hyphen, em-dash, or en-dash.
- Paragraph shading appearance consistently updates when removing forced line breaks from paragraph.
- Now able to use Character Styles inside Cross-Reference formats.
- Data Merge with multiple records no longer ignores changes in page dimensions when applied merge on master page.
EPUB
- State actions are now honored in FXL EPUB export when buttons are anchored in a multi-state object (MSO).
- Exporting to EPUB 3 Fixed Layout now embeds and displays the fonts in the EPUB if they are present in the package, and font embedding now works when World-Ready composer is selected.
XML
- InDesign CC no longer crashes when deleting XML elements that contain missing tables.
- XML import now works when pointing to transformation file in CC versions.
Direct Download Links
If you’re one of the folks who has had trouble installing updates with the CC application, check out the following posts at ProDesignTools.com, where they have a table of links to direct downloads of all the application updates (not just InDesign), and instructions for both Mac and Windows.
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If you’re not a fan of the big honkin’ Start screen (that takes over whenever no files are open), you can turn it off in Preferences > General. It’s called the “Start workspace.” Same dealio for the other apps — you can disable the Start workspace in prefs. You’ll need to restart the app to make it go into effect.
Many thanks for the tip……!
Also fixed an issue in OS X El Capitan where the Open dialogs would default to a small size. Unfortunately it didn’t get fixed in Photoshop or Illustrator.
Yes they like throwing things in your face… even if you don’t want them.
Colour Theme tool is still the default when opened.
A more useful Start Screen would be one with a list of items like Start Screen, Eye Dropper, Add Styles/Colours etc. to CC Libraries…
Seems like the more times I upgrade the more features I need to switch off, or switch off repeatedly after the programme preferences reset.
Exactly…There is so many, many urge things to do (ie. still no HSL/HSB color palette in color picker/swatch module etc) and only what you get are small useless changes.
The color theme tool is the default in the toolbar but there’s no keyboard shortcut assigned to it. Just switch to the eyedropper tool and it should stay that way in the toolbar and/or use the “I” KBSC switch to it.
I understand you can do this – but feedback on the Adobe forums where most people had asked for the eyedropper tool to be default.
I think.
I do like the new CC Libraries features and the glyph pop-ups on letters. Also feeling more confident about moving to El Capitan.
I’d have been thrilled with this release just to get the anchored button bug fixed. But the updates to Publish Online and the new glyph popup are really nice additions.
They ‘nice’ Bob. But hardly ground breaking.
Right… this is just a .2 release, so there is no intention of anything “groundbreaking.”
Fair enough, David.
Sync settings have also been removed. You can no longer synchronize your workspace between work and home.
Are there any workarounds? Export/import?
I’ve just updated to InDesign CC 2015.2, which I was dreading. But I have to mention the fact that this is the first time in two years that I have been able to double click on any tool, page or spread and something actually happens. It’s absolutely wonderful! What a relief! I can’t thank the InDesign guys enough.
I’ll give it a try, but just curious… is there a way to turn off the glyph pop up if you don’t like it?
Never mind… found the preference for it! :)
Thanks Leigh! It’s in Preferences > Advanced Type. Toward the bottom you’ll find a new section called Type Contextual Controls.
If ever a feature needed a toggle, this one does.
Thanks to Steve Werner for his article in ID mag. A great help in the midst of deadlines.
LTM
For some reason the new welcome screen doesn’t show up for me. I’ve tried a few things but still can’t get it to pop up. I actually like something like that so I can see recent files.
Make sure “Show “Start” Workspaces When No Documents Are Open” is checked under Preferences – General.
Thanks for this tip. My problem with the Start page seems to be what Steve mentions right below.
If you’re on a Mac and you have Application Frame turned OFF, you won’t see the Start Screen. It requires the Application Frame.
That seems to be what is going on. Thanks for the insight.
Glad you got it figured out. I keep forgetting that not everyone is a Windows user.
Double Yay!! For the ability to make the Eyedropper take priority over the Color Theme tool – Functionality finally restored!
And 0 points for the added bloat of more online features that I’ll never use. When will Adobe actually add some print and layout features? …after all this is a layout package.
We are still waiting better footnotes or styles based master pages for more than ten years indeed.
Hi,
Can someone help or just check the bug that I have in new Indesign?
Put the image, change the transparency to 40% (amy value) and try to move around.
Image blow up to 100% and clash the screen with pixels.
Most strange that it happen when I moving with Magic Mouse – Normal Mouse is ok.
Thanks!
When exporting to EPUB3 FXL no fonts are embedded. They are still replaced with default fonts. Am I doing something wrong?
(Exporting to EPUB 3 Fixed Layout now embeds and displays the fonts in the EPUB if they are present in the package, and font embedding now works when World-Ready composer is selected.)
Hi Rinie,
Font used to embed before as well just that font name in CSS used to go wrong when world ready composer is applied and hence text used to display using default font. Can you please open your epub in some epub editor tool like Sigil and check whether font is there in Fonts folder or not. Can you please check for reflowable epub as well, font is getting embedded in that or not.
Also which epub reader you are using for viewing epubs.
Thanks
-Anshul
Rinie I’ve never run into the bug described. Fonts were embedded in FXL before (you can’t turn that off, actually), and they still are in 2015.2. But I never tried it w/World Ready Composer. Is that what you’re using? The default is Paragraph Composer.
I also just noticed that when updating a table of contents, InDesign no longer inserts two extra paragraph return at the end. Hooray!
Hi,
Can anyone tell me if Adobe made any updates to kerning so that it can be accomplished via paragraph/characters styles when using InDesign CC? Or is it still best to use Peter Kahrel’s kern script?
https://www.kahrel.plus.com/indesign/kern.html
Thanks,
Greg
When working in Indesign CC 2015, we’ve had a couple of titles that when we import the notes section the text in indesign as huge word space gaps when adobe paragraph composer is selected. It seems to fix the problem the we use Adobe World-Ready Paragraph Composer. Why is that? And does the latter pose any issues when exporting files to PDF for print, or exporting files to Epub if we do not want to embed the fonts in Epubs. Many thanks, Lucy
afghanidata Now you possibly can add colours to your digital publications like eBooks, brochures, and magazines and so forth. As net publications are getting extra engaging with help for multimedia, colours, and format changes.