I was looking at some XML code in InDesign today and wishing I could emulate Dreamweaver, Oxygen, etc, where you can pick highlighting colors for code, to make it a lot easier to read. The code was actually an example spelled out on the document page, not real live XML in the structure pane.

Even a small piece of code can be pretty taxing on my little brain when it looks like this.

I look at that and think, "when's lunch?"

Then I think, "what's a quick way to make the tags bold and something other than black?" I think you could get some fancy results with nested styles, but a) that was more work than I wanted to do, and b) I didn't want to add any styles to the document.

Voila, a greplet is born.

What this dialog is saying to InDesign is, "find all my opening and closing tags and make them bold and blue."

Literally, find "<" followed by one or more word characters "\w+" followed by ">" or "|" "</" followed by one or more word characters "\w+" followed by ">"

Hit Change All and we get this:

It still ain't the Mona Lisa, but at least I'm not eating my lunch at 10 AM just to get away from it.

p. 52

Right-click/control-click an empty spot in the document window to get a lite version of the View menu at your cursor. (grids and guides controls, display performance, rulers, zooming).

Ruler guides come in two flavors, page guides, and spread guides. Spread guides stretch to the edges of the pasteboard. To create a page guide, drag out a guide and drop it on a page. To create a spread guide drop the guide on the pasteboard. To create a spread guide when you are zoomed in (i.e can't see the pasteboard), press command.

Double-click the ruler to create a spread guide without dragging.

Hold shift to constrain a guide to the nearest tick mark.

Command drag from the ruler origin to create crossing guides.

Reposition a ruler guide numerically by editing its x/y coordinates in the Control panel.

Control click with a guide selected and choose Move Guides to move them precisely.

Remember: columns created with guides do not control text flow on import.

p. 54

Create Guides command creates page guides only, not spread guides. Hey Adobe how 'bout a choice?

You must target the spread/page you want to drag the guide onto from the pages panel or it won't work.

To evenly space existing guides, select them and distribute, using the Control panel.

To show/hide guides on one layer only, DC on the layer name in the Layers panel.

Why can't I select this !@#$% guide? It's on locked layer or it's a master item.

Cut/copied guides can be pasted to other pages or even other docs.

Guide weirdness, (but it is technically correct): if you drag a spread guide up or down and release it on anywhere on the page, it turns into a page guide. D'oh!

p. 55
Cool Beans: hold alt/option as you drag a guide to make the current magnification level the view threshold.

cmd-opt-g should be called Select All Visible Guides, as it won't select guides below the view threshold. But choosing Layout > Create Guides...Remove Existing Ruler Guides gets 'em all.

p. 56

Obvious but worth stating: putting guides on different layers doesn't affect them visually. They're always above columns and margins, and in front of/behind page objects (depending on your pref setting).

When both Snap to Grid and Snap to Guides are selected, Grid snapping takes precedence.

Guides must be visible for things to snap to them, but grids don't.

Snap to Guides is layer-agnostic.

The "snap to" zone is measured in pixels.

p. 57
A nice, neat definition of masters: pages or spreads that automatically format other pages or spreads.

p. 58

Targeted vs. Selected pages: targeted page numbers are reversed in the Pages panel, selected pages are blue.

Betcha never noticed that the vertical ruler is grayed out beside non-targeted spreads. Good to know if the  Pages panel is out of sight.

Select a spread by single clicking on the page numbers.

p. 59
To dupe a spread, drag page numbers to the new page icon..

or drag a single page, or choose duplicate page/spread in the Pages panel...

or press alt/opt and drag to a new location in the panel. Whew.

p. 60
brackets around page numbers means you're looking at an "island spread." That is, someone turned off Allow Selected Spread to Shuffle.

p. 61
10 pages is the max for a spread. How many more do you want?

When you drag a page to another doc, the receiving doc's versions of identically named masters, styles, and layers win out.

If you copy a different size page size, it will be re-sized to match the receiving doc.

p. 62
Dragging a page to a new doc window gives you the insert pages dialog

p. 63
Master page objects appear behind page objects from the same layer.

Put a master item on a higher layer to have it appear in front of other page objects. It will still retain its mastery.

p. 65
Wow! To apply a master page to multiple pages, select them then press alt/opt as you click a master, or (yawn) choose Apply Master to Pages.

p. 66
So.. instantly remove all master items by selecting a page and option clicking on the None master.

Clean up after yourself: Select Unused Masters to delete trash 'em.

p. 67

Overriding v. detaching master items, you must override before you can detach.

You can override only if Allow Master Item Overrides On Selection is checked.

Wow: cmd-shift click and drag to override multiple items at once.

If you override a threaded text frame, all visible frames in that thread are overridden.

p. 68
Wow: master items that don't allow overrides have no frame edge and are un-selectable on a doc page. See Ghost in the Machine.

You cannot restore detached master items, but you can reapply the master, and delete the detached items.

p. 69

when importing a master from another doc with the same name, choose Replace Master Page = source overrides destination.

p.70
The number of layers a doc can have is limited to the RAM avail to ID. Hmm, so what happens when you make a doc with a jillion layers, then open the doc on a machine with less RAM? Let's hope we never find out.

Wow: to create a new layer above the selected layer (instead of atop the stack) hold ctrl/cmd as you click New Layer.

p. 71

What appears in a layer color: the dot in layer panel, frame selection handles, bounding box, text ports, text wrap bound, frame edges, and hidden characters, and text threads.

Deja vu: New Layer, Duplicate Layer, and Layer Options all have the same dialog box.

To select all objects on a layer, opt click the layer.

To move objects to a hidden or locked layer, hold cmd/ctrl as you drag. To copy the objects add opt/alt.

Paste Remembers Layers forgets an awful lot. When you have it on and move objects to a different doc, the only thing that comes is the layer name, not the layer's options or its place in the stacking order.

p. 74
Picking locks: objects on locked layers can change, e.g. if you applied a swatch and then change the swatch. Anything using the swatch on the locked layer will change.

More selecting vs. targeting: you can select multiple layers, but target only one. When you merge layers, all objects from selected layers move to the target layer.

To flatten a doc select all layers, then choose Merge

p. 75
ID vocabulary: paths vs. frames. Paths are vector objects, frames are identical w/one difference: they can be containers for text or graphics. OK, two diffferences, frames have the X inside them.

You create frames by placing or pasting contents into paths.

A frame is a container version of a path. Now it makes a tiny bit more sense that there's a rectangle tool and a rectangle frame tool........................nah, I still hate it.

p. 76

If you click inside a frame you select it. Not so with a path.

p. 77
Don't tease me, bro: when a frame contains text or graphics you can't redefine it. But the menu choice Object > Content isn't grayed out. You have to choose it to see all the choices are unavailable. Actually this goes for all menus. You have to navigate to the sub-menu before you can see it's a dead end.

p. 80
A doc can have only 1 chapter number assigned to it, use sections for a multi-chapter doc.

The 4 functions of sections: restart page or chapter numbers, change numbering style of chaps and pages, add prefixes and section marker text to the numbers, also section markers can appear in TOCs and indexes.

p. 85
If you want text variables to be present to all your future documents, set up the TVs with no doc open.

p. 87

You can use the Filename TV, with Include Folder Path, to always know where your doc lives.

p. 89

3 things you can do when deleting a TV: replace it with another, clear it, or convert it to text.

TVs are like Pinocchio-they want to be real living text, but they are just puppets.

You can copy TVs to another doc when you synch a book.

p. 90

Adobe's recipe for "a clean computer system": defragment, use virus protection, remove old versions of software, "optimize" memory, and update drivers. My recipe: don't eat Doritos at your desk.

Garbage In: Damaged PagMaker and QXP files usually remain damaged when opened in ID. Troubleshoot the doc in the original app.

p. 91
Clear unnecessary data by doing Save As. When you do a regular Save, ID appends new info to the doc but doesn't remove outdated data (e.g. info about deleted graphics). Seems a bit obsessive, no? Save as = smaller file, that redraws and prints more quickly--but by how much???

Head scratcher: Creating styles with no documents to open "can cause duplicate styles to appear when you create a new document." Why? Even if you have identically named styles in a template file, you don't get duplicate styles because the template's versions win out.

Head scratcher 2: to print separations, "use Adobe-conforming EPS, DCS or TIFF CMYK files only." So PDF, AI, PSD don't separate reliably???

Transform graphics before placing in ID, as ID sends the graphic in untransformed state to the printer, then appends it with the transformation instructions, which takes more time and more printer memory.

p. 92
File > Open can open ID 1.x and later, INX, PM 6, QXP 3.3, 4.1, and Passport 4.1, .indl and .indt.

.indls (libraries) from earlier versions of ID will open and convert to CS3, even if they were locked.

p.93
Semi-Wow: Drag assets from doc window into Adobe Bridge to create Snippets. But they have weird names, so you have to select and rename them in Bridge.

p. 94
Why didn't I think of that?: Create an instructions layer with in a template explaining how to use it. Lock it and make it nonprinting.

p. 95
To edit a template (.indt) choose File > Open > Open Original

Saving a doc saves the layout, references to source files (aka links), info on which page is currently displayed, and the zoom level.

Saving also updates metadata (thumbnail preview if the pref is turned on, fonts, swatches, file info).

Wowish: Save all open docs: cmd-opt-shift-s.

p. 96

A doc preview contains a JPEG (and on the Mac, a PICT) of the 1st spread. A template preview has JPEGs of every page, which you can see in Bridge.

Saving a preview with a doc in the Save As dialog box overrides and change the application pref (Preferences > File Handling > Saving InDesign files > Always Save Preview Images With Docs).

p. 98
If your files have a lot of the same metadata, save metadata as a template: File > File Info, Save Metadata Template. Then your template is a choice in the dialog box and auto fills the fields.
To get a free 100-page quickstart guide on switching from (and ironically, back to) Quark, go here.

For better XPress conversions: emulate QXP by choosing Text Wrap Only Affects Objects Beneath, and Adobe Single Line Composer.

p. 99
More on converting from Quark:

QXP's color profiles are ignored by ID. Embedded graphics are not converted. OLE or Xtensions graphics are not converted. Grouped items stay grouped, except for nonprinting items. Strokes and line styles are converted to those they most closely resemble. Custom strokes and dashes are converted to custom, well, custom strokes and dashes. Multi-ink colors become mixed inks, if they contain spots, otherwise they becomes process colors. HSB is converted to RGB.

p. 100
If you have trouble converting a large PageMaker doc, convert it in pieces.

ID can recover most docs that PM can't open. Hey wait a minute Adobe, back on page 90 you said garbage in, garbage out. Which is it?
At least he's honest: if ID can't convert something, it displays a warning and the reasons it couldn't do the job.

All items on the pasteboard of a converted QXP doc appear on the PB of the 1st spread in ID.

"Are you ready for something brilliant? Be one of the first to see Adobe(r) Creative Suite(r) 4 in a special web broadcast on 23rd of September, 2008"
SOURCE: http://www.adobe.com

You can sign-up for the live broadcast of this exciting new version of Adobe's CS4 (Which includes of course InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat, Dreamweaver and more!) here!

Even if you have already decided on a print design route there is no reason why further down the line you can’t take what you have learnt, i.e Typography, Page Layout, Fonts etc and translate that understanding into the web.

Learning both print and web design will make you even more marketable. In today’s job market, listings often ask for a focus on one, but knowledge of both. As a company owner, being able to offer a client a full marketing package, with print materials and a website to match, will only help to grow a business and build an impressive portfolio.

A few days ago I was reading some people's complaints about how it's all too easy to forget you're working on a master page. There's nothing inside the InDesign document window that makes it obvious you're working on a master page. Sure, there's the page number at the bottom left of the window, but sometimes that can be off the screen, or obscured by other stuff. And if your Pages panel isn't open, it's up to you to remember where you are. More times than I'd like to admit, I've designed a whole page, placed text and images, and gone to print before I realized I'd put everything on a master page. D'oh! This never happened back in my Quark XPress days, because I had that big honkin' chain icon at the top of a master page.

InDesign doesn't have anything quite so honkin'. But with a Ghost Frame, you could make your own BHMPI (Big Honkin' Master Page Indicator).

You could use any frame. But unfortunately, you can't use open paths or lines, since both of those are invisible when they are unselected and have no stroke/no fill.

Still, there areplenty of lots of possibilites.

A letter to match the master page prefix.

Or something more exotic, like the Japanese kanji for "master?"

Or even a master Jedi.

If you remember the last time I wrote about master pages, then you remember that I basically explained what should go on the master page, how I would suggest linking and grouping items to make them easier to override on your local pages later, and other bits like that.

But now that we've got a decent handle on our opening spread (aka "the first two facing pages of your document") we're going to get jiggy with the file and start looking at the other pages that will come. Rarely would I ever recommend that all of the pages for your book exist in one file. However, I also wouldn't suggest that you have every spread in its own document. This means you're likely going to have a document that has the first two spreads rarely look like the rest of the pages in your document. This means that you'll likely want more than one set of master pages.

But, oh and here is where it starts to get pointy, even though the bulk of the elements on this opening spread will be different than the bulk of the elements on the second spread, there are probably at least a few things that you want to have appear in the same position on every page. You could copy the repeating items on one set of master pages and paste them in place on the other master pages. But, anytime something happens more than once, that's the opportunity to introduce streamlining into your files. Streamlining saves you time. And as you can tell from my lack of posts on the soon-to-be-famous Michael Rankin's wonderful blog, I've been all about not spending time lately.

Here's a shot of the master pages from the previous post so you can see how few elements that are on the spread.

The designer has given you the design you'll need for the rest of the pages in this document. It has even fewer elements. If you compare, you can see that in fact, most of the elements are repeated. Ooooh! You know what that means? You're going to be so streamlined, that you'll need to put brakes on your mouse so you don't work too fast.

The right (recto) page looks exactly the same in both screenshots. The left (verso) page looks mostly the same. Except the second shot doesn't have a title and the main text box matches the size and relative placement of that on the recto page. If all of the pages in your document are going to look like either the first screenshot, or the second screenshot, then we've got the option to actually create 3 master pages that will make everything we do so much easier.

Wait? What!? If we're streamlining this, why would I add another master page? Well because this third master page (which I've been in the habit of calling the Z-Master, simply because I like the letter Z and feel sorry that it doesn't get used more often) will contain all of the elements that appear on every page in your book. The A-Master page will contain all of these items, and all of the items that are different from B-Master. And the B-Master will follow suit.

Since a picture is worth a thousand words, here is what your Z-Master will look like.

Almost exactly the same, right? Now what I'm going to do, is base my A-Master and my B-Master on my Z-Master.

To do this I'm going to go to my A-Master and select the title boxes and the verso text box. I'm going to cut them to the clipboard. Now I'm going to make sure that the recto and verso of the A-Master page are selected in the Pages pane and I'm going to choose "Master Options for A-Master" from the palette's dropdown menu. I'll get this window:

If you haven't used that "based on" function before, I suggest you give it a whirl. Now all of the items on your page are duplicated, so simply Select All and then delete. An exact replica of what was on your page before should remain. Try to click on something. You can't, can you? You know why?

Cause this page element doesn't exist on this master page. It exists on the Z-Master page. Much the same way that items that are on a master page are not easily selectable on the local page, items that are on a Z-Master can't be selected easily on the A-Master or B-Master. This means that any change you make to the items that live on the Z-Master will be reflected in every, single, page of your document. One change, affects the entire document. One change. Get it? See the streamlining now?

While you're still on your A-Master page, Paste In Place the items from your clipboard. The title boxes and text box will appear. You can select these, change them, and those changes will only appear on the local pages that are based on your A-Master.

Here's a great example of how this can save you tons of time. Say you've got a 30 page document and the footer for the document contains the chapter title on the recto and the unit title on the left. Just as you're *this* close to making the final pdfs, the editor emails you frantically saying that all of the unit and chapter titles have to change. In a previous, less-efficient life, this would mean that you'd have to spend hours and hours copying and pasting those new titles into every page. With this new Z-Master, you have to make the change once per document. Glorious, glorious streamlining.

One other example that directly affects this example is this. We know that the background colors are going to change depending on the type of story the page will contain. If we've got a 30 page nonfiction selection and you need the background to be blue, all you have to do is apply your Object Style for the background to the one box on the Z-Master page and every page in your document gets populated. And when you "Insert Pages", your 30-page document will look something like this in your pages pane.

It took an extra 3 minutes to create that Z-Master and base your A and B Master pages on it. But what you've done, by streamlining, is saved yourself potential hours of frustration. And saving time is always easier than saving the world.

To quote the author (Matt Willey):

This is a time lapse video of what goes into the process of page design. All of the permutations are quite interesting. Clients should take a look at this and understand that while we do move things around a page and send them a few versions, we move stuff around on the screen and in our heads about 100x more. In actuality, the client is seeing version 200+ by the time they see version 1.

Source: http://krossi.com/2008/07/17/magazine-page-layout-process/

Graphic designers are confident and deliberate

p.3
All InDesign/InCopy documentation is available in PDF and LiveDoc formats on the Resources Page at Adobe.com.

p.8
Fonts are installed during ID installation on a Mac at library/application support/adobe/fonts
or on a PC at startup drive/program files/common files/adobe/fonts

p.16
To show/hide all panels press tab (knew that already), but didn't know that to temporarily show tab-hidden panels, move your mouse to the screen edge.

p.18
Press ctrl (same on Mac or PC-wow KBSC parity) while dragging a panel to keep it from docking.

p.19
To resize all panels in a dock, drag the gripper at top left. I just like the idea of there being thing called the gripper in ID.

To resize a single panel, drag a side or any corner.

p.20
To collapse a panel dock into pure icons, drag the gripper toward the screen edge till the text disappears.

p.24
Customizing menus: you can customize the main menu, panel menus, and context menus by choosing Edit > Menus

Show All Menu Items appears at the bottom of each menu where you've hidden items.

Holding the command key temporarily shows any menu choices you've hidden.

p.26
Danger! Do not assign single-key keyboard shortcuts to menu commands, because they interfere with typing text. If an insertion point is active when you type a KBSC, ID activates the shortcut instead of inserting the text. Wow, there's a great prank to play on someone.

p.34
Slick way to jump to a master page: cmd-j then type the letter, then enter. So to jump to master page A, it's cmd-j, a, enter.

Close all windows for the active doc: cmd-shift-w

Close all windows for all docs: cmd-shift-opt-w

p.35
Math in panel fields: to use the current value as part of the expression, click before or after it. becomes

Applying percentages in panel fields is even easier. So if you have  enter to get

p.36
Prefs and settings are stored in files called InDesign Defaults and InDesign SavedData, which are saved when you exit InDesign.

p.39
RAM and "the kind of actions you perform" limits the number of undos you have.

p.42
Mimimum Vertical Offset= how far the pasteboard extends from the page/bleed/slug, whichever is farthest out.

Good trivia: Maximum pasteboard vertical offset is 10 feet. Maximum document width is 18 feet. Minimum is 1 pt.

p.47

To override the current units in panel fields and dialogs, use these abbreviations:

inch- i, in, inch, "
millimeter-mm
pics-p
point-pt, or p before the value
ciceros-c
agates-ag
NONE Are CaSe sensitive

p.49
More trivia: what are the only non-printing elements to remain on screen when you switch to Preview mode? A line drawn with measure tool and guides that were selected before switching into Preview mode.

p.50
Snap to Guides also makes things Snap to the Baseline Brid.

Working at 100% view makes it much easier to keep the X,Y position and width/height of objects at clean whole point values.

Whew, sorry for the piratespeak. A week of sun, sand, and gift shops stocked with eyepatches and rubber hooks will do that to a person. Here's in interesting tidbit on what I have dubbed InDesign Ghost Frames, which I discovered last week on the Vineyard while my kids were watching Scooby Doo. Coincidence? Hmmmm.

I never believed in ghosts till I started reading the InDesign Help file. I'm not talking about the ectoplasmic remnants of ex-people. I mean spooky page objects that affect a layout even though you can't see or select them. Behold, an empty looking document page.

All layers are visible. Guides and frame edges are showing. You'll have to trust me on those; scout's honor. OK, nothing there, right? Now I draw a frame and fill it with text.

ZOINKS! It's the ghost of Credit Card Bills Yet To Come! This page is haunted! Or is it? There must be a perfectly logical explanation. Hop in the Mystery Machine and help yourself to some Scooby Snacks. We're going to find just what this ghost is made of.

In a new document, go to a master page and create a text frame. Using a ghastly font, type a ghoulish glyph.

Convert it to outlines (cmd-shift-o).

Now let's gracefully remove the outlined glyph from its frame. With the Selection tool, select the text frame and the outlined glyph, then choose Object > Pathfinder > Intersect.

Scale it to monstrous proportions.

Turn on Text Wrap: Wrap Around Object Shape, with zero offset.

Set stroke and fill to None.

And now for unmasking. Our ghost becomes totally invisible on a document page if we go to the Pages panel and uncheck Allow Master Item Overrides on Selection.

As a master page item, our skull and crossbones would normally have a dotted outline in its layer color. And it could be overridden by cmd-shift clicking/dragging it. But with this option turned off, the outline vanishes and the object cannot be overridden or detached from the master. From the document page, it is invincible and invisible--lurking until its presence is revealed by some unsuspecting text that wanders by. Of course, I could have used any object with text wrap applied to it; I didn't have to start out with a glyph. But then you wouldn't've gotten the bonus Pathfinder tip. Also, I did a Find/Change after filling the frame with text to remove all End of Paragraph markers and give the skull a cleaner outline.

I'm not yet sure what I'd use a Ghost Frame for, but it fascinates me that I can completely hide something on a document page. Maybe a less creepy hidden message or watermark. Keep this trick in mind if you ever can't tell why text is jumping around on an otherwise deserted page. It's also a good prank to play on your unsuspecting co-workers. Just make sure there are no meddling kids around to foil your plans.

Woo Hoo!  I did it!  I did it!  I did it!

I finally dug out that little manual that came with my it-took-me-two-months-to-research-spending-at-least-two-hours-everyday-for-two-whole-months digital camera from the drawer and pulled off its plastic wrap (yes, I purchased the camera LAST summer) and read it!

Way cool!  I knew there was a reason I spent that much time researching digital cameras and chose THAT one!

So, today, I threw the bathing suits on the girls' back, stuffed a few towels into a bag and drove to the community pool for... you think I'm going to say swim, don't you?  You think that I want to tell you how I took my kids swimming for the first time ALL summer (yes, I'm aware this is the LAST week of summer vacation).  But you're WRONG!

I didn't take my kids swimming.  Well, yes, they swam in a big, huge pool and splashed around and had a blast!  But that's not what I was going to say.

I went to the pool to USE MY CAMERA!  (duh!)  It was SOOO cool.  I was fiddling with all the new features.  Well, actually, the same OLD features that have always been there, but totally new for me since I didn't bother to read that darn manual!

And now, I have way cool pics on my way cool digital camera.  Yes... I... do! 

All right, so they're not totally, way cool.  They're more like, "what was she thinking when she snapped this shot" sort of cool, but didn't you hear what I said?  I KNOW HOW TO USE MY CAMERA AND ALL ITS LITTLE BUTTONS AND FUNCTIONS AND GADGETY STUFF!

Highlights of the day:

• Alexandra (my oldest) screamed at me to put the camera down already and come swim with her so she can show me what she learned at swim lessons this summer.
• My dad (who joined us) told me to use the video feature on the camera instead of all the fast-shutter feature when snapping Alexandra's triumph in being able to swim without arm floaties. (Exhibit 1 below)[gallery]
• There was nobody there to take pics of me in the kiddie pool with my 11 mo. old as he laughed and splashed on the first step of the pool b/c I'll be damned if I let someone else snap a pic with my camera before actually reading the manual for themselves.

I'm already imagining the layouts for these pics.  I should probably put it together in a double-page layout instead of a whole book.  After all, it was only one day, right?

Happy Scrappin'!

Page layout, like archery, is not as easy as they make it look.

Like, totally check these out.  They are so ace.

ProgressBar1.Visible = (!(e.CurrentProgress<=0 || e.CurrentProgress==e.MaximumProgress));
if (ProgressBar1.Visible) {

ProgressBar1.Value = ((float)e.CurrentProgress/(float)e.MaximumProgress) * 100;
} else {

ProgressBar1.Value = 0;
}
}

I am not a scripter, nor do I play one on TV. I know my share of HTML, CSS, and XML, but really I'm just an old school publishing geek who never tires of learning the next trick or tool. My hands are all GUI from years of keyboard shortcuts.

I know scripting is in my future. It's just too powerful, too useful, too cool to put off much longer. And I am totally jealous of the power of scripters. It's not like I haven't tried. I've attended AppleScript and JavaScript seminars, but they didn't stick. Hell, I have driven around an 800-page JavaScript book on the passenger seat of my car all summer, in hopes that it would start talking to me during my commute. No dice. So as a gentle, evolutionary step toward scripting, I've been working to learn GREP within InDesign

GREP was added to InDesign with CS3 as a more powerful means of finding and replacing text. While it sounds like something you should be inoculated against ("The nurse gave Johnny his Dip/Tet, his Grep, and a lollipop.") it really stands for General Regular Expression Print. Forget the General and the Print part, the heart of it are these things called Regular Expressions, little secret codes that function in a Find/Change operation. And they make GREP searches a jillion times more powerful than a plain Text search.

Text search in InDesign only gives you four wildcards: Any Digit, Any Letter, Any Character, and Any Whitespace. GREP has those plus many more wildcards. It also lets you look for locations, like the beginning and endings of words and paragraphs. So you can say "find every word (of any length) starting with a capital letter".

It lets you specify repeat values, so you can say things like, "find every number of three or more digits". Or, even fancier, "find every hyphen in between numbers of three or more digits".

And you can add logic, to say find "Mike" or "mike,", or find every word ending in "ike," except "Mike."

And it lets you take any part of a found expression and leave it alone. So you can find phone numbers, add parens around the area codes, and leave the numbers themselves unchanged.

Combine this text-finding ability with Find Format settings, and I think it's fair to say you can now Find/Change anything you can think of in an InDesign document. Providing you're thinking of text, of course.

The only "problem" with GREP is, it's more digital trivia to learn. Your brain's already addled with passwords, keyboard shortcuts, file formats, and the names of all the actors on Barney Miller. For the love of Abe Vigoda, how are you going to learn GREP codes?

You can just start playing, but that can be frustrating to say the least, because like all coding adventures, you don't get much feedback when you're doing it wrong. Nothing happens, or the wrong thing happens and you have no idea how to fix it. I bought the O'Reilly Safari book on GREP in InDesign CS3, which very good, well worth the $10. But there's something even better, and it comes from New Zealand.

For learning GREP, there's a great, free online tool called The Lightning Brain GREPGrokker. It's offered up by Rorohiko Ltd. who also have a bunch of free and commercial plug-ins for InDesign (make your own Sudoku! Sweet!). The GREP Grokker is an interactive tool for learning GREP. You can follow the step-by-step instructions and see how typing in certain codes selects text. Or you can type/paste in your own text and search on that. It is just so cool to see how the selection changes as you change your codes. It's very "oooh", "ahh". Check it out. And check out Rorohiko's other plug-ins. There's some fun free stuff in there. Like if you used to love Quark's Jabberwocky, they have a version of it for InDesign.

via swissmiss

Okay, people... who's idea was that?  A big CEO of a major scrapbook supplies corporation who was trying to find ways to make every little, ridiculous do-dad a possible scrapbook embellishment and cash in on it?  Clearly, someone in some high up places is trying to exploit the "creative license" we like to call our ingenuity.  But let's face it folks, there's nothing creative or appealing about sticking a staple on an album page.  I don't care what color the staple is!

If you haven't heard of this yet, then check it out.  They're being offered in an array of colors -- as if that will make me buy them.  Think again, corporate bogey.

Now chipboard... that's a cool idea.  I don't know why, but cardboard embellishments in various shapes, sizes, color and design make my mind spin with excitement.  A flat page suddenly becomes interesting because the title is in chipboard!  And what fun to paint it myself, too.  Me and My BIG Ideas has a new line of chipboard.  (Check out their sparkley stuff while you're there, too.)

I love trends folks.  I think it's fun to discover the latest craze and see where people's ideas take the rest of us.  But staples?  Seriously... we're supposed to be preserving our pics, not driving metal rods through them.

Happy Scrappin'!

If we look at online behaviour, user paths give us a solid idea of routes to content, where they return to and where they tend to go next. Human behaviour tends to follow patterns, see this article about mobile phone usage for an example of how predictable we tend to be.

Engagement is Conversation

This pattern of behaviour is something that good web analytics managers can see by interrogating their data. Alec Cochrane and I recently presented on the subject of building and measuring engagement and he summarises our talk here.

Metrics can tell you the most popular paths to frequently visited pages and we can change the interface accordingly. This can help us formulate our persuasion architecture but of course there are other things to consider...

No place like home

The homepage on a site suffers in a different way as it’s a starting place, a returning place and contains areas created as a diversion (meant for conversion) by many different stakeholders.

Add to this the fact that many users from search, email or RSS may never see it and it is an area that seems to be in a state of struggle. Serving the purpose of communicating a message from the site owners as well as serving the user.

Of course the more routes you have to your content the better the overall measure of the engagement your site has with your community of users.

Elements of engagement

A concept model can describe elements of engagement that need further exploration

But if we look at this in another way and think of the home as a place that should react to user’s wishes regularly, then it would be far easier to create an engaging experience.

Personas can help here but going back to the concept model would bring the greatest clarity about what needs to be presented. The concept model describes the whole site but also captures the key elements of engagement, and the parts that need representation on a homepage.

Taking this into account a typical homepage needs to offer;

1. Fresh content that is regularly updated with visible changes aided by the use of images. (Users check back frequently for news)
2. The use of themed areas and a cluster of stories around a subject area
3. If Jobs are offered they need a better promotion with an idea of the amount of job types displayed to the user
4. A consistent placement of sign-up areas throughout the site, this will enable conversions to occur and conversations to begin between you and your users.
5. An improvement of the graphics and images used on the site needs to be made to convey quality and of being a trusted authority. (Maximise promotional areas and do not give too much emphasis to 'most popular' widgets. These regions can take up large amounts of screen area and though they drive some traffic, without accurate measurement we can never be sure of the effectiveness of these devices)
6. Research material (white papers or case studies) need to be placed in an obvious position with more ‘evergreen’ content in the form of useful research that is graphically promoted.
7. Use blog content in a way that enriches themes or offers other angles on an existing story (also helps in changing of content on homepage). Opinion pieces also help in conveying authority and tone at the place where some users are visiting for the first time and also engage with returning users looking for an opportunities to converse.

Context, placement and pathways

The points above are based on news sites that offer different elements and in turn different modes of user engagement. Obviously looking for a job is not the same as researching and looking for case studies. So context is always the major factor when we think of what elements to display.

Put together the user's path through the site, the context of where they have come from and what they are interested in and you have the ingredients to build the best engaging experience. The tricky part is to have an adaptive interface that will allow you flexibility.

By being aware of context, placement of content to reflect interests and user's paths it will give a road map for engagement success.

Over the years, I've talked with a lot of designers who are just as afraid of master pages as Buffy was of the Master. Well, maybe that's a slight exaggeration. But once Buffy was given knowledge of the Master , she became less afraid. And I think the same would happen with a designer or production person who is making or needs to use a template.

Like so many things I'll probably end up talking about, master pages are great because they save time. Time that I'd rather spend watching Buffy, time that Michael would rather spend Photoshopping space suits on his cats, time that you may rather spend reading Tolstoy. Or, time that you may be able to spend working for another client or working for that promotion. Master pages lead to measured efficiencies. Impress your boss with that line.

This is our sample file. This is the first spread, there are other pages that follow this that contain the last bit of our story but this is the perfect example of how to begin creating a template from this document. I wouldn't consider this a template, but some people would. It's a point of preference and comfort. Since I often think my way is right and therefore the only way something could/should be done, I've become shocked lately to see how some people's thinking differs from mine. Mine is still right, of course, but I'm willing to be understanding that they're different from me.

I like a template to contain empty boxes/frames that are linked as needed but minimally styled. For example, my version of the perfect template for this layout to be used across all file types would like this:

How I got this was by selecting ALL, cutting, going to Master Page A and Pasting in Place. I then deleted all of the content from the text boxes and applied the "none" object style to each frame, except for the footer. Now I have the frames I need to begin creating any of the four types of files without having to remove any text. All I have to do is select a box and style it with the desired object style before I begin pouring. There are a few other things I need to do to make this template work better. By taking a few extra steps now, I'll save myself a lot of time later.

There are just a few things I'd like to explain more. Let's start with the red line around the outside of my spread. This designates how much bleed the printer requires of me. This number will vary from printer to printer so be sure to ask yours how much to prepare for. This particular printer asks for a p9 bleed. (That's 9 points, for all of you who work with other measures. I hated points when I first started, but after trying to do the math with fractions, I realized points were easier.) To set your bleed line, go to your File menu and choose Document Setup. Click on the "More Options" button on the right. At the bottom of the window are selections for bleed and slug.

By adding a measurement to the bleed boxes, you'll get the nice red line outside your spread so you can visually check that all of your images bleed off the page as required. If "Snap to Guides" is selected, it'll be even easier to make sure that you have the right amount of bleed on frames that run off the page. It also means that you can easily set up your print styles to include this area when you print a paper copy, or print a postscript file. If you want to have the exact same amount of bleed on each side of your layout, all you have to do is input the number into the Top box and select the little chain icon to the right of the entry boxes. This will apply the same amount to each box without you having to type the information four times. "Measured efficiencies" remember?

We won't be using the Slug yet, but if you wanted to include a frame that would appear outside the layout when the InDesign file was viewed and easily be printed or not printed you would set your slug area as desired. One possible use for slugs might be to create a box in the slug area where you can leave notes for the Designer to view.

Another time saver is to set up our file so it automatically applies the page numbers in the footer. And this is much, much easier than you may fear. Simply place your cursor where you want the auto-number to appear. Now go to your Type Menu and select Insert Special Character and then Auto Page Number. Click and you're done. If the pagination changes, your page numbers automatically update and you never have to manually change a page number. In fact, I would highly suggest never manually changing a page number.

Now I briefly talked about layers in my first entry here on Mike's wonderful site, but I want to revisit it. I propose a simplification and standardization of layers. Your organization mileage may vary, but there's no reason to have dozens of layers in a file. For this layout I propose 4 layers:
Footer
Text
Art (which isn't being used for this spread, but will be used for the spreads that come after this one)
Background

Very simple, right. You can look at the name of the layer and look at the item on your page, and probably guess on which layer that item will reside. The only thing which should live on the Footer layer are the footer boxes that contain the page numbers, and any book title, chapter title, etc. info. That's it! This layer will begin in the unlocked position, but once you add the needed info to your master page, you will lock this layer. This will help you feel confident that you won't accidentally edit this item.

The second layer in your palette is the text layer and it should contain any boxes that will have text poured into them. I would also suggest linking all of your text boxes together in the order you're most likely to come across the text. This will help your pouring job easier in CS2 and even easier in CS3. I also suggest selecting all of your text boxes and grouping them together. Since the text boxes will remain on your master page, but you'll actually begin to pour the text on the working page which means you'll have to break the link for these items from your master page. And only these items, actually.

There are still a number of "efficiencies" we can express in this template, especially for the pages that we're going to add to it next time. But we've got a really good start, I think. I may not be as witty as a cadre of Hollywood screenwriters made a high-school cheerleader sound, but hopefully I've at least given you a little more confidence so you can start to tackle the über-master pages in your own documents.

Le Photographer

Seinfeld is my favorite show of all time, and tonight's anniversary got me to thinking what my computing life was like ten years ago. The dot come bubble hadn't yet popped in everyone's face. Some grave nerds were warning us that Y2K would would be the end of all things. And in my apartment, I connected to the internet via my 28.8k modem, and a Performa 630 running Mac OS 8.1, and believe me, it was uphill. Both ways.

So tonight I set the Wayback machine (literally, the awesome Internet Wayback Machine) for the spring of ’98 to see what was happening in publishing tech. Here are my Top 7 Finds.

7. The May issue of MacAddict reviewed a new product from Macromedia called Dreamweaver 1.0 and gave it a rating of “spiffy.” They were glad that it allowed folks to use that cutting edge CSS stuff. But it was a tad slow, even on a smokin' PowerMac 8500.

6. A shareware company called Casady & Greene released an application for playing MP3s. They called it SoundJam. I gladly paid for it, and here's my serial number to prove it: sj1-024-917-43422. SoundJam ruled. Apple realized this, bought it, and harvested the code and re-named it iTunes. OK, you may not think this is publishing tech, but it was to me. I got through innumerable Quark pages only with the sanity-saving help of SoundJam and a good pair of headphones.

5. The W3C made XML an official spec. It's taken 10 years, but we're finally figuring out how to make good on the incredible promise of self-describing data. Now if only my data would shut up!

4. The search engine of choice was AltaVista. Most of us hadn't yet heard of a project at google.stanford.edu which was still in beta, and would go live that September. Keep an eye on these guys, they might be onto something.

3. After sleepwalking through the decade, Apple released the iMac and changed everything. First it came just in Bondi blue, then in a rainbow of colors. By the turn of the millennium, everything from coffee mugs to Volkswagens came in 5 delicious, translucent colors. The iMac has a place in the top 20 consumer products of all-time, but why did it have to come with the dumbest mouse ever invented? Round? Really?...Really?

2. Engineers at Adobe were hard at work on a brand new application called K2, some called it "Quark Killer." You know it as InDesign. It was still under wraps in the spring of 1998, but on September 2nd at Seybold, it "drew gasps from the assembled publishing professionals." And soon they weren't the only ones gasping...

1. In Quark's Denver headquarters, Fred Ebrahimi, Tim Gill, et al hatch a plan to acquire Adobe in a hostile takeover. This is not a joke. Adobe was in the midst of some bad times, caught in the tractor beam of Apple's blunders, and needing to lay off about 300 employees to stay afloat. Check out Adobe's site in April 1998. They were touting Photoshop 4's hot new features, lifted from Gallery Effects. Things like Chalk & Charcoal, Graphic Pen, Craquelure, Dry Brush, Plastic Wrap, and so on. I have never, ever applied any of these without immediately hitting command-z. Have you? They should be be in a menu called Pre-Undos. In fact, I think the Filter Gallery was invented just to remove the command-zness of undoing these silly effects. Something akin to speed dating to ease the pain of so much rejection.
It was nice meeting you, Smudge Stick. Have a nice life.

Anyway, back to the story.

Quark's plan was basically that time-honored business strategy of, "if you can't beat 'em, buy 'em and smother 'em." They intended to buy Adobe and kill PageMaker, FrameMaker, and K2/InDesign. Why do I think they came up with this idea after watching The Godfather? On August 18th they sent Adobe an offer they couldn't refuse.

I think they also traveled to San Jose to make a personal appeal:

Fortunately for every person on Earth who has made a book, magazine, or web page in the last 10 years, Adobe's response was, "drop dead." After about a month of getting only John Warnock's answering machine, Quark got the hint and returned to its core communications model of huge stretches of arrogant silence punctuated by perfunctory vaporware presentations. Man, I should write for Wikipedia.

Seriously, though, take a minute and imagine the publishing world we'd live in if that takeover had happened. The what-ifs boggle my mind. And not in a good way. Bad, bad boggling. I have a creepy feeling we'd still be on Quark 5--and it STILL wouldn't run on OS X or do tables. Quark XposureShop, anyone???

I think this is all amazing when you look at it as a whole. One year, 1998, saw the end of Frank and floppy discs, Seinfeld and SCSI ports, and the dawn of the iMac, XML, InDesign, Google, and iTunes. Yadda Yadda Yadda indeed.

Tables Are the Key

HTML tables are the key to Web page design. Since HTML doesn’t reliably support absolute positioning, Web Designers have long used tables to control page layout. Dividing your Web page into a series of table cells gives you some degree of control over where text and graphics will appear.

Sophisticated page layouts require very complex tables. Designers use tables with cells that span multiple rows and columns, or even nest tables inside one another to create the desired effect. The result can be a confusing mass of HTML code.

While page layouts can be a challenge to decipher, a few simple tricks can help you understand the underlying table structure. Start by viewing the Web page’s HTML source code.

Go to the Source

You can easily view the HTML source code used to create any Web page. In fact, it’s impossible for a Web Designer to hide their HTML code so that others can’t read it.

To view a page’s source code using Internet Explorer, go to the View menu and select Source. A new window will pop up containing the page’s source code, as shown below.

The graphic below shows a snippet of the the HTML source code for the start of the body section for the KMAC web site (http://www.kmaconline.com), a relatively simple Web page that we will use as an example.

As you can see, the HTML code for even a simple layout can be complicated. Trying to understand the Web page by viewing the source code alone can be an exercise in futility. Surely there must be a better way!

Cracking the Secret Code

Fortunately there is a better approach: reverse engineering. While this may sound hard, the basic steps are simple.

1. Save a copy of the page to your local computer
2. Change the page’s HTML code to show you the underlying tables
3. View the page in your browser

Let’s try it.

Saving the Page

To save a local copy of the Web page using Internet Explorer, go to the File menu and select Save As. A dialog box will appear asking where you’d like to save the Web page.

Notice that this dialog box has a field labeled Save as type. This lets you chose exactly how the page will be saved. By default, the field should be set to Web Page complete, which is what we want. This option tells Internet Explorer to save the Web page itself and also download a copy of all the graphics it uses. This ensures that we will see all of the page’s graphics when we view the local copy. Otherwise our local copy would be filled with broken images.

Viewing the Page

Once you’ve saved the page, you will need to load your local copy into your browser (Internet Explorer doesn’t do this automatically when you save the page!).

To load the local copy, follow these steps:

1. Under the File menu, chose Open. A dialog box will appear.
2. Click the Browse button in this dialog box.
3. Another dialog box will appear that allows you to navigate the files on your local computer’s file system.
4. Find the local copy of your Web page and select it.
5. Click Open, and then Ok to load the page.

If you’ve done everything correctly, you should see the Web page in your browser, and the browser’s address field should say something like “C:\temp\Adventure Summer Camp for All Ages - Kent Mountain Adventure Center”.

Change the Code

Now that we have a copy of the page on our computer, we can edit the HTML source code and view any changes we will make.

To edit the source code, again go to the View menu and select Source. A window will again appear showing you the HTML code. This window is actually a copy of Notepad, the Windows text editor.

You can change the HTML code using Notepad and then select File - Save to save your changes. When you refresh the Web page in your browser, the changes will appear.

Turn on Those Tables

Now we’re finally ready to view the tables used to control layout. Find the first TABLE tag used on the page, and set the width of its borders.

For example, line 14 of the source code for the Kent Mountain page looks like this:

<TABLE border=0 cellPadding=0
cellSpacing=0 width=620>

Notice that the table’s BORDER attribute is set to zero. Change this to set the border width to something we can see like a 4, as shown below.

<TABLE border=4 cellPadding=0

cellSpacing=0 width=620>

Now save the changed code and refresh your browser window to load the changes.

This clearly shows the main table used in the page’s layout. Notice that we can see three distinct columns: a left column containing the page navigation, a right column containing the page’s main text, and a narrow middle column used for padding.

Let’s go further into the code. Notice that line 22 of the page shows another table that looks like this:

<TABLE border=0 cellPadding=0
cellSpacing=0 width="100%">

By likewise setting this table’s BORDER attribute, we can see where it appears. Or, if you prefer, you can also use the table’s BGCOLOR attribute to color the table. BGCOLOR shades all of the table’s cells in the color of your choice. For complex layouts it is sometimes easier to understand tables using both BGCOLOR and BORDER.

That’s what we’ll do in this example, as shown below.

<TABLE  BGCOLOR=orange border=4
cellPadding=0 cellSpacing=0 width="100%">

Again save the HTML source code and refresh your browser window to view the changes. The page should now appear as below.

This shows that the right column of our main table includes a second, nested table. This second table likewise includes three distinct columns.

This same approach works with images too. If we aren’t sure which parts of the page are created using graphics, and which parts are created with pure HTML, we can set the BORDER attribute for each image to see.

Look and Learn

There’s more to this layout that what we’ve seen here, and this is a relatively simple Web page. Analyzing pages with a complex layout can take quite some time. Don’t expect to understand the page’s structure immediately; it often takes several tries and a little experimentation to understand what’s really going on. As a rule of thumb, expect to spend 2-4 hours reverse engineering a page layout.

That may seem like a long time, but it’s worth the trouble. Once you understand a page layout, it’s easy to use something similar in your own page designs.

Copy, But Don’t Plagiarize

All of this raises an important question: are we stealing someone else’s work? The answer depends on how much someone’s page layout you plan to copy.

If you are debugging pages to learn new HTML tricks, then you’re probably safe. Professional Web Designers routinely debug pages in this way to build their skills.

On the other hand, if you reuse an existing page layout by simply changing its text and graphics, then you’re on shaky ethical ground.

Let your conscience be your guide, and ask yourself how much of your own Web pages you’re willing to let other people mimic.

Life as a Web Designer

And don’t forget that this same technique can be used to track down HTML errors on your own pages or in pages that you inherited from someone else.

If you plan a career in Web Design, then you can expect to spend a lot of time debugging pages in this way, both to understand them and to track down errors. You’ll find yourself reverse engineering lots of pages to track down errors that break your page. Any tools and tricks that help are worth the time investment to learn.

Don’t forget that using Keynote NetMechanic’s HTML Toolbox is also a great way to debug Web pages. HTML Toolbox includes HTML Check & Repair, a great tool that finds coding errors on your Web page and can fix them with just one click. It can dramatically reduce the time you spend debugging Web pages.

Can you design my letterhead/business card/logo?

I'm not a designer. I know more about design than I used to, and I have a decent sense of the basics, but I'm not going to help anyone create the best representation of their business. But a friend, who is a graphic designer, emailed me recently and said he'd designed some amazing business cards, bought the card stock, gone to Kinko's, and was very disappointed with what they gave him and wondered what they did wrong.

It looked beautiful on my screen, I just don't get it.

So I asked him to email me the file. He sent me this PDF (names have been changed to protect the innocent):

My thought upon viewing it was that there was no reason for this blue text not to print on the white background. I called him to ask for the InDesign file. He sent that over and we chatted while I opened it. I saw a chocolate background and the blue text and questioned why this background was brown.

Oh, that's cause that's the color of my paper, so I just wanted to come up with a blue that would look good against the brown. I set the background as a non-printing item before I made the pdf.

Ah ha! I replied: "But the blue overprints the brown, so what you're doing is combining the blue ink with the brown paper, not really printing blue ink on top of brown paper. Since your blue is lighter than the brown, its not going to show up well.

But it looks great on my screen. How could I know that? What can I do now?

I suggested he use his color palette to get the CMYK breakdown of the Pantone brown color. And then double-click on the Paper swatch in his swatches palette and change the color to have approximately the same values.

He was doing this at the same time as I was.

But! That doesn't change anything. It still looks good for me.

"But we're not done, friend," I said. "Now go to your View menu and choose Overprint Preview. What does it look like now?"

Exactly what I got from Kinko's. Yuck. What do I do?

"First, when printing something on a color copier, always make sure your paper is lighter than your ink. If you want a solid-color background and colored ink, find a CMYK breakdown that matches your desired paper stock and put those values into the paper swatch. Now choose and edit the text color (while keeping Overprint Preview on) to make sure that your text will look good on the paper.

"Or, you could just choose a white paper and then you'll know that your text will be the color you want it to."

It wasn't the answer he wanted. It wasn't the visual effect he was going for, but unfortunately unless you're using a printing method that uses an opaque ink on paper (not toner, not dye) then your options are limited.