I learned a lot from both speakers and am really looking forward to future meetings.
IDUG Denver member
Front Range Community College: Westminster Campus
Event DetailsDenver InDesign User Group Meeting Notes
April 7, 2009
A. Meeting Business
"Off Month Training" -- We will be conducting our new "Off Month Training" at New Horizons in the DTC. This upcoming session, May 12, will cover Interactive PDFs. Although it's not a hands-on session, feel free to bring your laptop to follow along. Member cost is $30 for the 3-hour session; non-members are $40 (but if you register as a member, you can get the member pricing). The class starts promptly at 5:30 p.m. and we will offer food for an additional (and nominal) cost. We will have a registration form online soon, but until then, mark your calendars and feel free to e-mail us with questions and to let us know you're interested!
Make sure you come to our meeting June 2! We will be auctioning off a full copy of Creative Suite CS4 Design Premium! So come with your checks ready! Money raised at our auctions go into the group to pay for our meeting snacks and room rental.
Don't forget about the Denver ID User Group Web site www.idugdenver.net for announcements, a community forum, and more. This is where you can get the most up-to-date information about anything going on in our group. Bring a friend and get $5 auction bucks to use for any of the wonderful books and software available at each meeting. It can even be applied to the full version of InDesign CS4.
Remember, we meet after each meeting at the Exchange Tavern (though we're open to new suggestions) to carry on the discussion. Ask Erica or Julie (at the Welcome Desk) for details.
Looking for a job or want to share your work or just have an InDesign question? Post it on our user group forum www.idugdenver.net/forum.
Have a meeting topic that you are dying to know about or would you like to do a presentation? Please send an e-mail to admin@idugdenver.net.
B. Presentation
1. Exporting InDesign into Flash
Presenter: Brian Reyman
Presentation Summary:
Exporting from InDesign to Flash has gotten easier, and it can cut your workflow process almost in half. Flash is a multimedia tool in which you can create animations, videos, interactivity, and rich Web applications. Flash is a widely used tool. Approximately 99% of computers have Flash. Some common file formats are FLA (native Flash file), SWF (Flash player), and FLEX (used more with developers). It's easy to use and it has been around a while so its not likely to go away any time soon.
There are some downsides to using Flash. There are accessibility issues and many cell phones don't support it. There are three ways to create your Flash project:
Flash Primer
Fast Flash
Slow Flash
What is great about any of these techniques, you can export your file directly from InDesign into Flash. Instead of creating a PDF, this file type can display directly into a browser. Great to use for magazine or portfolios that you want to bring interactivity to. If you export your InDesign file as an XFL file, your layout will translate into Flash for authoring. You will have to do some tweaking of the text when in Flash because some of the text will also be transferred as objects, but the Flash Developer you might be working with will still love you! They won't have to redesign what you just did.
InDesign CS4 has buttons already available that you can use that have actions already attached to them, so all you have to do is put in the information. In InDesign you can also add interactive page transitions. When in InDesign it's still a good idea to create Master pages, use an RGB color space, and make sure you keep in mind whether you are designing for the Web or print.
2. Creating a Table of Contents in InDesignPresentation Summary:
There are benefits of creating a Table of Contents for your document, whether you use a Table of Contents page or not. Such as: if you are creating a PDF of the document, you can already have the bookmarks created. The Table of Contents can be behind the scenes, not a part of your document.
Creating a Table of Contents (TOC) in InDesign CS3 or 4 has gotten easier. To start out, you should create your paragraph styles and Master Pages first in InDesign. The styles trigger your TOC. Then go into Layout > Table Of Contents. In the dialog box you can set your paragraph styles to signify different aspects of your table of contents. Example: if you have Section Headers you want the TOC to pull from, you go into the dialog box and set it to pull anything that has the style "Section Header" and tell it what you want it to look like. If you are creating a PDF, make sure that Create PDF Bookmarks is checked in the dialog box as well. If needed, you can also create hierarchy and make your bookmarks hyperlinks. The bookmark hyperlinks are limited to 256 characters, but you can edit those to fit.
What's also great about the TOC feature is that the file will update automatically if you switch pages around. Just go to Layout > Update Table Of Contents. Before you know it, you will have a professional and consistent Table of Contents.
Erika Barnard for taking the meeting and auction notes
Julie Geary for being the greeter at each meeting
Dan Baron New Horizons for the training space and our new sponsor
Dan Mulligan, Yellow Dog Printing, for the awesome banner
All of our members for making our little InDesign community great!
Special thank you to our sponsors Yellow Dog Printing and New Horizons.
"Great presenters-just enough info to know what I want to explore further. Enjoyed meeting others in the field. Thanks!"
"This was a great class! I will definitely come next time."
"Finally got a very good idea of what Flash is."
"I thought it was very informative and interesting. Thanks!"
The next meeting is set for Tuesday, June 2, 2009. Networking starts at 6 and the meeting starts at 6:30. Check out www.idugdenver.net for the latest meeting information. Hope to see you all there! Don't forget to bring a friend — you’ll get auction bucks and you'll be helping to grow our membership.
Erica Gamet and Brian Reyman
United States of America