This Week in InDesign Articles, Number 105

David Blatner

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Hey, don’t forget that next week is pi day! (At least here in the “backward” states, we write 3/14 for the 14th of March? and 3.14 is, of course, ?). It’s a good time to celebrate all things scientific, including the science of learning InDesign!

• I did a live 35-minute interview with eMediaChat hosts Rick Zanotti and Kirsten Rourke, which you can sort of watch here. I say “sort of” only because the audio and video are so out of sync (we did it via Skype, so I blame Microsoft) that it’s hard to watch. But you could move it to a background window and just listen.
• Cari Jansen has written four great articles that are must-read for anyone learning GREP:
  • Positive Lookahead
  • Negative Lookahead
  • Positive Lookbehind
  • Negative Lookbehind
• Sometimes you want to embed a video into a DPS (or PDF, or whatever), but you don’t have the original video — it’s all on youtube or vimeo or something. Keith Gilbert points out one way to “download” the video. (And look in the comments afterward for some other options.)
• Got Muddy Gradients? Here’s some quick tips on how to fix ’em! (I had to laugh reading this because I remember writing this up in about 1991 or so for my book QuarkXPress Tips & Tricks. Some things never change!)
• I’ve mentioned before how InDesign is good for web site wireframing, and Michael Murphy has even done a title at lynda.com about it. Here is another article at Smashing Magazine about wire framing with InDesign.
• Anne-Marie and I are speaking at Adobe MAX this year, the week after PEPCON. There are going to be a bunch of awesome InDesign sessions!
• Speaking of tablet publishing: If you’re looking for an HTML5 tablet app solution, you’ve likely heard us talking about PressRun, which is now App Studio. They’re doing a tour this month and next to show off these awesome tools in San Francisco, Hamburg, Paris, New York City, and London.

Other Topics

• For all those photo folks out there, here’s a great article by my friend Conrad Chavez on tools that are even better than the histogram are so good in Photoshop, Lightroom, and Camera Raw.
• Interested in iBooksAuthor? Mike Rankin just came out with a new title at lynda.com called iBooks Author for Teachers: Fundamentals
• Can’t find what you’re looking for at lynda.com? That’s a problem for all sites with lots of content. Mordy helps with some search tips.
• This “premium designer freebie bundle” caught my eye? lots of fun fonts and images and so on, free for a limited time.
• A free ebook on the ins and outs of Fixed Layout EPUB? Okay!
• I’m pleased to announce that we have a few new speakers at PEPCON Austin this year, including Olav Martin Kvern, Nigel French, and Thad McIlroy! It’ll be awesome.

Enjoy!