This Month in Articles, April 2016
I’m having an argument at the moment with the moderator of a closed InDesign group on Facebook who thinks that posting helpful links to other sites (such as InDesignSecrets or Lynda.com) is somehow spamming or trolling. In my opinion, posting links is one of the most important things we can do — because no one person or site can do it all. The internet has taught us that it’s the connections that are important. So, with that in mind, here are some connections that I think InDesign users will find interesting:
- Do you use Microsoft Office? If so, you should check out Anne-Marie’s newest Lynda.com title, “Managing Conversions Between Adobe CC and Microsoft Office”
- RodsAndCones publishes a quarterly free tablet magazine about color management, and they did a fun interview with me! You can find links to download their magazine app (created with Twixl) here.
- The Pfeiffer Report did a terrific analysis of how using CC Libraries can improve your efficiency!
- Monica Murphy at Tech4Pub shares some insight into the brand new “Save As” behavior in CC 2015.3
- Curious about GREP in InDesign? Erica Gamet is doing a series of videos on the topic on her new YouTube channel!
- Woo hoo! All Lynda.com video courses are now available on Apple TV!
- Creating EPUB ebooks? Joshua Tallent has a nice write up about how to automate the inevitable cleanup
- Speaking of EPUBs, if you’re making them, you should check out these scripts from Rorohiko, written up by Laura Brady
- Learn more about Adobe’s Creativity in the Public Sector Survey in this article by Jerry Silverman
- Are you interested in creating plug-ins/add-ons for InDesign? Davide Barranca has a cool new book/course about building HTML panels. (While he’s focusing on Photoshop, it’s relevant for InDesign, too.)
- Markzware just released a freebie (Mac only, currently) app called ID Util which lets you preview InDesign documents even when you don’t have InDesign on your computer. (It even works with InCopy and IDML files!) My favorite part is that it enables Mac OS “Quick Look” on these files, too!
- For those of us interested in EPUB technology, it’s interesting that the IDPF and the W3C are considering merging
- If you haven’t heard of this documentary movie in development called Graphic Means, you should check it out! They’re largely funding it through pre-orders, so considering buying!
- This was a fascinating idea (nothing to do with InDesign): Facebook: The World’s Largest Bookstore?
- Do you script InDesign? If so, first of all you should come to the Creative Developers Summit at PePcon in June. Second, you need to see Keith’s post about how to make ExtendScript Toolkit (ESTK) fast again.
- Here’s a fun easy article about how to use Adobe Comp to make a flyer that you can finish up in InDesign
- Color Management for onscreen display (e.g. tablets) is tricky, but now that Apple is using both sRGB and DCI-P3, it may get even more confusing!
- Did you know Twixl Publisher 5 (for creating apps) is coming this summer? Check out what it will do!
Enjoy!
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Wow! Lots of excellent articles and links. I’ll add one more. Those who have Roku on their television, can stream Lynda via a what Roku calls channels:
https://www.lynda.com/apps/roku
I’m toying with getting a Roku streaming stick. They’re only about $40 at some online stores and much of the content is free. I just fear it will be too much a distraction.
Someone might suggest to Lynda that it create a series of open-to-all videos describing how its lessons can be used to create the equivalent of going back to school in business, marketing, design and a host of other areas for a fraction of the cost of even a community college, much less the sky-high costs of a university or private art school. The course could guide those students-to-be about how they should set up and manage their training. If it hasn’t already, it might set up web pages to manage that.
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Sigh! Looks like In Design Secrets isn’t going to play rumor site and drop hints about what’s coming up in ID-2016. It’s almost May, so it must be about time for the next major release. There’s only so much that can be done to add features to a mostly print media application, but there’s still a lot that could be done to make ID faster and more efficient to use. Long documents can be a grind.
Great point, Michael.
As for rumors: Oh yes, we have lots of rumors! I hear the next version of InDesign will remove the ability to have any color swatches except Paper, so that all text and objects will have to be colored white. But think of the toner and ink we’ll all save! ;-)
That would be an awful lot of white-space… :)