Some of the new features introduced include:

Liquid Layout
Now you can apply liquid page rules to automatically adapt content when you create an alternate layout with a different size or orientation in InDesign. This makes it both quick and easy to design for multiple screen sizes and devices, something which is essential in today’s environment.


Alternate Layout
Now you can efficiently create and design multiple versions of a layout for different devices all within a single InDesign file. This helps you avoid the clutter of maintaining multiple documents just for a single piece of creative work.


Linked content
Link content within or across InDesign documents so that changes (including interactivity) made to the parent text or object are applied to all linked children objects. This is a great time saver helping you avoid hunting down all those instances of a particular item, when applying changes or updates to a document.


Content Collector tools
Grab text and objects from an existing layout using the Content Collector. In a new layout, use the Content Placer to add items in the order you want them to appear. This is a faster way to replicate pieces of copy and graphics across multiple layouts and documents, and a big improvement on the old copy and paste technique.


PDF forms within InDesign
If you have used InDesign to layout pdf forms, you’ll know how you then need to use Acrobat to insert the form fields. Well CS6 makes the job easier and you can now create form fields directly within InDesign before you export to PDF. You can also assign the tab order in InDesign using the Articles panel. Much simpler.


Split window & Pages panel enhancements
With InDesign CS6 you can now view two side-by-side layouts within the same document, to compare the look and feel of the layouts and help ensure consistency throughout. Additionally pages panel enhancements allow you to display alternate layouts in the Pages panel to organize content more efficiently.


Persistent text frame fitting options
Set frames to grow with additional text, based on simple parameters. Expand and shrink frames automatically for headlines, callouts, or other variable content. This is a nice timesaver, and saves having to constantly change the frame size for documents you have to regularly update.


Grayscale preview
Preview your layouts in grayscale to see how they will look on a black-and-white device or when printed in black and white.


Export to PNG
Export your InDesign document to PNG, a lossless format, for use on the web. You can export the entire document, part of the document, or individual items.

Enhanced zoom for linked objects
Zoom in to a linked object from the Links panel to evaluate it more clearly.

Interactive HTML
Include interactive HTML — such as Google Maps and animation developed with Adobe Edge software — in InDesign layouts. Interactivity is retained when exporting to HTML, EPUB3, or .folio for Adobe Digital Publishing Suite.

Live Preflight for digital publications
Preflight digital publications using EPUB and Adobe Digital Publishing Suite preflight profiles. Use Live Preflight to detect and fix any problems before exporting.

There are a number of other new features in InDesign CS6 all of which make it easier to design documents for multiple devices, saving you time and effort.
Those on a current subscription will get InDesign CS6 at no charge once it is released. If you don’t have a valid subscription you will need to upgrade to InDesign CS6 if your able or buy a new version if not.

If you are using InDesign to produce content for a variety of different platforms and screen sizes, then the CS6 upgrade is a must have. If not however it’s still a worthy upgrade with numerous enhancements and time saving options that have been introduced.

Apple’s ‘New ipad’ comes with a spectacular, high res retina display. If you want your DPS publications to look good on it, you’ll want to take account of it’s new resolution. Bob Bringhurst has summarised some useful points to consider.

Adobe has launched a new developer centre for all things DPS.

For those still deciding on whether or not to publish on tablets, Craig Morrow and Will Steuber offer some interesting analytics to help you think about it.

And finally Zeke Koch, Adobe’s Director of Product Management, discusses the business implications of tablet pubishing using Adobe DPS.

I want to make duplicates of my sample logo. I can do it in the following ways:

1) Select the object then Edit>Copy followed by Edit>Paste

The resulting copy is placed in the middle of the page but the location  is not controllable.

Copy and Paste

2) Hold the alt key and drag the object. All Adobe applications will copy the object when dragged in this way. A copy is created where you let go the mouse. This can be constrained by holding shift at the same time. Unfortunately it’s not possible to take a screenshot while holding alt.

Alt drag copy

3) Select the object and choose Edit>Duplicate. A copy will be made in a specific location but there is no obvious control over how this was decided. Duplicate is in fact a kind of repeat instruction. It takes it’s values from the Step and repeat function but, as that comes later in the list, it doesn’t look like the two are related.

Duplicate

4) Select the object and choose Edit>Step and Repeat. This is one of the most powerful ways to copy objects. The dialogue box allows control of both the number of copies and the specific horizontal and vertical locations. Even better is the recent addition of the create as grid check box which allows duplicates in rows and columns. Great if you need to create badges, business cards, tickets etc.

Step and repeat

You can also use this one to make interesting sequences.

Step and repeat 2

5) Duplication isn’t limited to the options in the Edit menu. Several tools can also perform duplications, specifically the Scale, Rotate and Shear tools.

Transform tools

In each case, select an object on the page then double click the tool. A dialogue box appears with settings for that function. Each dialogue box has a preview check box. When you are satisfied with the result, click copy (OK just modifies the original object) to create a new copy.

Scale and copy

6) If you need to repeat the step above but on a sequence of objects, select the Object>Transform>Transform Sequence Again. InDesign will repeat whatever steps it took to reproduce the last transformation you performed. This is especially useful for adjusting multiple objects that can’t be grouped.

Transform sequence again

Fun with shearing

Workspaces can be found in two locations: under the View>Workspaces drop down menu or, in the Application bar on the right hand side.

InDesign workspace switcher

I this example I’m using InDesign. The current workspace (Essentials) is displayed in the application bar next to the search field. Click on the downward triangle to see a list of preset workspaces (this is known as the workspace switcher).

InDesign Essentials workspace panels

The essentials workspace doesn’t really have enough panels for even basic work with InDesign. Try selecting Advanced from the list, this causes InDesign to refresh and show some new panels.

InDesign Advanced workspace panels

The Advanced workspace contains more useful panels for general InDesign work and I recommend using this one as a default rather than Essentials.

Adobe supplies various preset workspaces to get you started. Their names should tell you all you need to know about what to expect. When you try a new workspace, be sure to check the menus as well as many Adobe workspaces make use of menu highlighting and some actually hide certain menu options.

As well as using the preset workspaces, you can make your own. Make visible any panels you wish to use. Drag and organise them on the screen to the location and order you find most useful. Remember that the toolbar and control panels can also be moved by dragging the double row of tiny dots.

Random arrangement of InDesign panels

Go to the workspace switcher and select New Workspace.

InDesign save workspace dialogue box

Type in a name.

Any custom workspaces you have created will appear at the top of the switcher list.

When you reselect Essentials this time, you may find it retains the customisations you made for your custom workspace. This is because you started with this workspace in the first place. To revert this, go back to the workspace switcher and select Reset Essentials (or whatever your starting workspace was). InDesign will now reload the panels in their default arrangement.

All the major Creative Suite apps are extremely complex and feature far too many functions to display at once. Workspaces give you complete control over what is displayed and when. You only need to see the panels you need right now.

Boxoffice cover 1

Boxoffice makes use of DPS’s horizontal and vertical layouts to create two entirely different covers for each edition. Just rotate to switch between them. This theme is repeated in various locations in the magazine.

Boxoffice cover 2

Inside there’s a live tweets page displaying the tweets of Boxoffice staff writers.

Boxoffice tweets page

The editorial pages are presented and structured and make good use of DPS features such as swipable picture galleries to create interactive content.

Swipeable content

Another smart feature is the use of buttons to create interactive quizzes. Readers hit a button to answer the question and are rewarded with a cheeky pop up!

Boxoffice interactive quiz

Buttons are also cleverly utilised to add commentaries to objects such as movie posters and, in one particularly inventive feature, to create your own exploitation movie title!

Boxoffice button poster

Boxoffice interactive poster

Boxoffice also utilises plenty of video so you can check out trailers of forthcoming moves and there are plenty of links to external web pages and twitter feeds.

All in all, Boxoffice achieves a great deal by clever use of DPS’s interactive features which is no small achievement given the hectic, weekly production schedule. I also like the way the interactivity doesn’t overwhelm the publication with shouty and distracting sound and video, the way some other apps do. Best of all each issue is only 69p.

Boxoffice is available now in the app store.

The filter is only accessible when you import a text file. In the Import dialogue box, make sure to check the Show Import Options check box.

InDesign text import dialogue box

InDesign will display the following dialogue box.

InDesign Word import options dialogue box

The first few options are self-explanatory. You can select various Word attributes to import into your InDesign document. Note the check box Use Typographer’s Quotes, this maps incoming quotation marks to correct, ‘typographer’s quotes’ i.e. straight commas are mapped to opening and closing quotes ).

The Formatting panel allows you to choose whether or not to import Word style formatting. InDesign imports Word formatting by default hence any Word styles (such as Normal) will be appended to the document’s Paragraph styles pane.

If you do not want the Word formatting, check the Remove Styles and Formatting from Text and Tables radio button and all text will revert the default face with no styling, unless you choose the Preserve Local Overrides check box. Tables can also be reverted to plain  or tabbed text.

If  choose Preserve Styles and Formatting from Text and Tables, you have a number of further choices. Firstly you can decide what happens to Word breaks; preserving, converting them to InDesign column breaks or discarding them altogether.

Four check boxes allow further customisation.

Import Inline Graphics brings in images and illustrations that have been copied and pasted into the Word file.

Import Unused Styles brings in all the Word styles, whether they are used or not.

Track Changes allows Word track changes markups to be imported. These cabn be viewed in the InDesign Story Editor.

Convert Bullets & Numbers To Text converts Word formatted bullets and numbered lists to editable characters. Note that the numbered lists will no longer update automatically and should be replaced by InDesign’s numbered list feature if this is desired.

Incoming style names conflicting with any existing in the document  can be managed using the dropdown menu. My preference is always to override with the InDesign style.

Perhaps the most powerful features of this filter is contained in the last radio button, Customise Style Import.

Customise Style Import

Clicking the Style Mapping button displays the following dialogue box:

Style mapping dialogue box

The box will display a list of all incoming Paragraph and Word styles. By selecting the drop-down to the right of each style name, you can tell InDesign which style to use instead of the Word one. You can map as many styles as you need. This is an incredibly fast and powerful way of converting text into your preferred styles.

Once you have completed mapping styles,  you can return to the Import Options dialogue box where you may wish to save your choices by using the Save Preset button.

Import options save preset box

Like saving a workspace or a page set-up, this option will save you time in future use of the feature.

General uses for the option/alt key

In most Adobe applications, holding option/alt changes the cancel button to reset in many dialogue boxes, saving the need to close and reopen the box.
Similarly, option/alt + drag an object duplicates it, including guides

Option/alt In InDesign

holding option/alt on  import text, changes the loaded text cursor to semi-auto flow mode. This will flow text into a column then reload the cursor automatically.

In the Tool bar
option/alt + click on zoom tool activates zoom out

option/alt + click on gap tool causes items and gaps to move as group

option/alt with any tool (except the type tool) to active temporary grabber

option/alt with any drawing tool (ellipse, rectangle, line) to draw from centre

option/alt with pen tool to change to convert point tool

option/alt with add anchor point to change to subtract anchor point and reverse

option/alt with pencil tool to activate smooth tool

option/alt with scissors to activate add anchor point

option/alt with transform tools (rotate, scale) to manually move reference point

option/alt + click on any tool with multiple alternates to cycle through them

option/alt + click on apply icon to cycle through colour, gradient and none fills

option/alt + click on view modes icon to cycle through view modes

In the Pages panel
option/alt + click on add new page icon launches insert pages box

option/alt + drag a page icon in pages pane, duplicates the page. Also works in Masters area

In the Layers panel
option/alt + click on add new layer icon brings up layer options box

option/alt + drag a layer duplicates it

In any Style panel
option/alt + click on add new style (object, paragraph or character) opens the styles options box

option/alt + click on a style overrides any manual overrides

In the Swatches panel
option/alt + click on add new swatch brings up swatch definition

In the Gradient panel
replace the colours of the gradient stops by first highlighting them (click on the small triangle above the colour square) then option/alt + click on the desired new colour in the swatches panel

In the Article panel option/alt + click on create new to generate a new article entry without opening the new article pop up window

In the Control panel
option/alt + click on the drop shadow icon to open the effects dialogue box

option/alt + click on any text wrap icon to open the text wrap panel

option/alt + click on the corner options icon to open corner options dialogue

option/alt + click on any of the frame fitting icons to open the frame fitting dialogue box

In Control panel, type tool selected:

option/alt + click on Drop cap and Nested styles icons to open Drop caps & nested styles dialogue box

option/alt + click on Bullet and Numbered lists icons to open Bullets and numbered lists dialogue box

option/alt + click on Column & Gutter icons to open text frame options dialogue

option/alt + click on Span columns icon to open span columns dialogue box

option/alt + click on Type style icons to open Preferences at various type style settings

In the Assignments panel
option/alt + click on create new icon to create a new assignment without opening the assignment dialogue box

In the Links panel
option/alt + click on relink icon to relink all missing links

option/alt + click on update link to update all links

In the Transform panel
option/alt + click on the scale X or Y percentage icons to open the scale dialogue box

option/alt + click on the rotate and shear icons to open the rotate and sheer dialogue boxes

In the Trapping panel
option/alt + click on create new to open the new trap preset dialogue box

In the Conditional Text panel
option/alt + click on create new to add a new condition without opening the new condition dialogue box

In the Tags panel
option/alt + click on create new to create a new tag without opening the new tag dialogue box

Additionally the option/alt key features as a modifier in many keyboard shortcuts, but that’s another post…

InDesign has been able to import movies for some time, unfortunately it was not possible to view them without exporting the file to another format. CS5 introduced the Media pane which addresses this issue.

Empty media frame

Importing movies is exactly the same as importing standard images. Either select an existing frame or import directly by hitting cmd + d (ctrl +  on Windows).

Media import into InDesign CS5

Select your movie. InDesign initially represents the movie with a generic pattern.

Generic placeholder pattern

Keep the movie selected and open the Media pane (once again I’m using the Interactive workspace). The top section of the pane will display the movie together with playback controls. You can preview the movie here.

InDesign Media pane

The next step is to choose a preview image for the movie. Scrub through the movie to find an appropriate still then select From Current Frame from the poster dropdown, InDesign imports a still image to the frame. You can also select a separate jpg file as the poster if you wish.

Choose a poster image

You can assign playback controls to the movie using the media controller dropdown. As with other animated content, the entire spread can be previewed at any time using the preview icon in the corner of the pane.

Choose Media Player options

It’s not always convenient to play movie content from the start. Where the file contains navigation points, these can be accessed using the navigation points section of the pane. Buttons can be configured to play movies from a specific point. If no navigation points are present, you can add custom ones by scrubbing to the desired frame and selecting the Add button. Note that any navigation points added within InDesign are only accessible from the media pane in InDesign. Adobe recommends creating navigation points within the movie itself (using Adobe Media Encoder or Flash Professional), these can then be accessed by any application.

Audio files can also be imported in the same way. The Adobe help system says the following on importing media types:

“You can import video files in Flash Video format (.FLV and .F4V), H.264-encoded files (such as MP4), and SWF files. You can import audio files in MP3 format. Media file types such as QuickTime (.MOV), AVI, and MPEG are supported in exported interactive PDF files but not in exported SWF or FLA files. We recommend that you use file formats such as FLV, F4V, SWF, MP4, and MP3 to take full advantage of the rich media support offered in Acrobat 9, Adobe Reader 9, and Adobe Flash Player 10 or later.”

Now we’ve covered all the basics of interactive content, it’s time to export the file.

Select File>Export and choose Flash Player (swf) from the dropdown,  click ok.

Export as Flash

InDesign will display the swf export options window.

Swf export options

From here you can customise the output by choosing pages, transitions, backgrounds etc. Most important is to consider the scale of the document. The swf file will typically be played in a web browser so you should consider the likely resolution of your end user’s monitor. A typical size would be 1024 x 768 (also a resolution that works with most projectors). If desired you can also apply a general scaling value.

Clicking the Advanced tab will allow configuring of Flash specific features such as fonts and image resolution. These can normally be left as default unless the are specific issues to be addressed. There are some bugs when exporting to Flash from InDesign. It’s worth looking at the Known Issues page to understand these in advance.

When you are satisfied, click ok to export the complete document.

InDesign will render the file as an swf accompanied by an hmtl index file which will open in your default web browser. It is also possible to export your file as a Flash Professional document (fla) for further editing with the Flash Professional application.

You should find all interactive content fully functional within the animation. I’ve uploaded the html index and swf of this sample file for reference. All the animations were generated using InDesign.

City_Guide_Final

City_Guide_Final

Before starting an interactive document, it’s worth changing your workspace to Interactive. There are a number of new panels on display including Animation, Timing, Preview, Media and Object States. We’ll use each of these in the next couple of articles.

InDesign interactive workspace panels

When you open a document with animated objects you will notice a new icon. InDesign cannot display animation directly so it indicates where an animation has been applied by displaying the 3 bubbles icon. This spread already has three.

InDesign animation icon

To animate an element, select it with the black arrow tool. I’m using the LIVE heading in this case. Open the Animation panel and choose a preset from the drop-down menu. The presets are exactly the same as those supplied in Flash Professional CS5 so you can easily start your animation in InDesign and transfer to Flash Pro later. You will notice the butterfly icon appear in the preview section of this panel following the preset you have chosen.

InDesign animation panel

Once you have settled on a preset, you can modify its timing, looping and other attributes via the checkboxes. You may also want to expand the properties icon to modify other attributes. The selected object will now display the animation icon as well as a green arrow indicating the direction of motion.

InDesign motion path

The next step is to tell InDesign when and how you want to run your animations. The Timing panel shows a list of all the currently animated objects. The animations occur, sequentially in the order of this panel. Notice LIVE heading is at the bottom of the stack, meaning it will animate last. To change this simply drag the object to the a new place in the list – just like ordering layers.

InDesign Timing panel

There are three ‘Fly’ objects on the list. These currently run one after another which can take quite a while. To run several animations at the same time, select the objects in the list and click the chain icon in the lower right. This links the objects together and tells them to run simultaneously.

InDesign play together mode

Although InDesign cannot directly show the animation it is possible to preview what the final effect will look like. This can be done by opening the Preview panel. InDesign will automatically render the current page in Flash and display all the animated elements. You may want to scale the panle for the best view of the effect. You can replay the animation at any time use the player controls at the left side of the panel.

InDesign Preview panel

The preview panel can be used to preview just the current spread, the whole document or individual objects as desired.

In the next part we will examine Multi-state objects.