Tips and Techniques

The tips here rotate randomly, so be sure to come back often for more tips. You can also reload the page to get new tips. Note that we show both Macintosh and Windows keyboard shortcuts, Macintosh first.

Send your favorite trips to tips@indesigncentral.com.

InDesign CS3 | InDesign CS2 | InDesign CS

InDesign CS3

Revenge of the Butterflies

The new iconography for Creative Suite is fairly boring, though many people disliked the previous versions' nature subjects. But if you miss the old InDesign butterflies, open the About box (choose InDesignAbout on the Mac, or HelpAbout in Windows) and type butterfly. Watch what happens. And the longer you let it go, the more interesting it gets! (Also see what happens when you click a butterfly.)

Interface and Operation Tips

Tip #62: Oddly, you cannot thread frames while the Type tool is selected, so remember to switch to a selection tool first.

Layout, Typography, Graphics, and Output Tips

Tip #261: You cannot insert footnotes into tables. Instead, you have to handle them the old, manual way: inserting a footnote character as needed and typing your footnotes below the table, and updating the footnote as needed manually.

What's New in Version 5 (InDesign CS3)

New #48: Also new to InDesign CS3, the mouse pointer changes to the grabber (hand) pointer when it's not over a page in the Pages panel. If you click and drag this pointer within the panel, InDesign scrolls the panel in the direction you move the mouse.

Notes for QuarkXPress Users

Note #24: Leading as a character format is a carryover from PageMaker (and not necessarily a good one). QuarkXPress users may find InDesign's leading method to be odd at first because leading is a paragraph-level format in that program. In most cases, you'll apply a single leading value to entire paragraphs, in which case leading behaves like a paragraph-level format.

InDesign CS3 | InDesign CS2 | InDesign CS

InDesign CS2

Interface and Operation Tips

Tip #13: A few palettes contain arrows in the lower-right corner that you can click and drag to resize the palette, and some palette menus let you change the orientation of the palette from horizontal to vertical.

A few palettes also use a double-arrow character next to the pane name to indicate that there is more to the pane than may be displayed; click the pane title to expand or collapse those extra options.

Layout, Typography, and Graphics Tips

Tip #220: To create nonrectangular text frames, select the appropriate frame shape (ellipse or polygon), as described in the next section for graphics frames. Then click in the frame with the Type tool to type text, or select the frame with the Selection, Direct Selection, or Type tool, and import text by choosing FilePlace or pressing +D or Crl+D.

What's New in Version 4 (InDesign CS2)

New #2: InDesign CS2 gives you two ways to work with files, through the standard Windows and Macintosh folder structures or through the Adobe Version Cue structure, which is designed to help multiuser environments work in shared folders.

Notes for QuarkXPress Users

Note #7: The ability to move master pages from one document to another, or even from one layout to another in a QuarkXPress 6 project, does not exist in QuarkXPress. So QuarkXPress users may be in the habit of using libraries to transfer master-page items from one document to another. In InDesign, you don't need to take this circuitous route.

InDesign CS3 | InDesign CS2 | InDesign CS

InDesign CS

Interface and Operation Tips

Tip #81: If you select a frame with the Direct Selection tool instead of the Selection tool, handles are displayed only at the frame corners rather than at the bounding-box corners and midpoints. When you select a frame with the Direct Selection tool, you can reshape the frame, and thus crop the picture differently, by dragging corner points, adding and deleting points, and so on.

Layout, Typography, and Graphics Tips

Tip #341: In a complex document with lots of graphics and fonts, you may want to select the Show Problems Only option in the Fonts pane and in the Links and Images pane when preflighting the document. If selected, this option will display only elements flagged by the preflight tool in that pane.

What's New in Version 3 (InDesign CS)

New #48: You can now preview frame edges in tables whose cell are set a 0 points; this helps identify cell boundaries. To see them, choose ViewShow Frame Edges.

Notes for QuarkXPress Users

Note #28: QuarkXPress does not offer drop shadow or feathering features, although there are third-party plug-ins to add these capabilities.

InDesign CS3 | InDesign CS2 | InDesign CS

REMEMBER:
Adobe Creative Suite does not come with a printed manual for InDesign!

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