This Week in InDesign Articles, Number 31

David Blatner

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I have to tell you: I’m excited… I’ve been predicting a bright future for ebooks to anyone who would listen for almost two decades, so when I see charts like this one, I get all warm inside:

• ebook growth charted in annual format

That said, there is still a long way to go — with better software, lower device weight, better resolution (though the announcement yesterday of a 326 ppi iPhone 4 was pretty darn cool). I’m also pleased that iBooks will support PDF files, though if Apple doesn’t get a better PDF reader in their iOS, it won’t be nearly as interesting.

Anyway, here’s some other eBook and (lest you think I’ve forgotten) design and print links you should know about.

• iPad newbies should run, not walk, to get your free copy of Tonya Engst’s eBook about iPad Basics.
• When it comes to ePub, InDesign CS5 is really pretty great… except for what appears to be a huge, massive, horrible bug involving hyperlinks and multi-document books. Liz Castro has a good overview of the issue on her blog. Hey, in fact, if you’re into making ePubs from InDesign, you should pre-order a copy of Liz’ new book from Peachpit Press!
• Oh, on the topic of CS5: I don’t recall if I linked to Bob Levine’s excellent Top 10 Reasons I’m Upgrading page. Check it out!
• I really like Growl (a free system utility that can send you messages), but not everyone is happy that Adobe decided to install it on people’s computers when you install CS5. Oops. They discuss it here.
• James Felici just keeps coming up with good articles about type. Not surprising, of course. Here’s one on setting ragged-right type.
• A question came up recently about cropping in PDF files… you know when you use Acrobat’s crop feature, it doesn’t truly crop stuff out, it just changes the bounding box. But Clint Funk wrote up an explanation of how to permanently crop PDF files in Acrobat Pro.
• Dang, Clint has answered another PDF question that has been bugging me for the past couple of years: How to let 2 or more people sign (digitally) a pdf properly. Here’s a PDF tutorial that he wrote up on the subject.
• Here’s a concise and helpful article on how to copyright your work (in the USA), from the folks at lulu.
• Oops, we’re back on the epub subject… I think the new official ePub logo is cool!
• This is a fascinating article in the Wall St. Journal about what used to be called “vanity publishing” and is now called “making more money by doing it yourself.”
• If you’re a findchangebylist script user, this script should make the whole process of writing your findchange text file much easier! Warning: the introduction and all the user interface text is in German! Gah! I tried it, but got nervous with the dialog box and cancelled. Anyone want to take a crack at translating it?

Well, that’s it for this week. Stay tuned, read the blog, sign up to be a (free) member to keep on the mailing list, and… happy InDesigning!