Des Moines InDesign User Group

Meeting Summary

Gabriel was very easy to follow. He was great!

Member

InDesign CS4
Mon, Nov 3rd, 2008 at 6:00 PM
Meredith Corporation Conference Core

Event Details

The Des Moines InDesign User Group met on Monday evening, November 3, 6:30 at the Meredith Conference Core.

Our snack and drink Sponsor for the night was Laser Resources, www.laserllc.com.

Gabriel Powell was our speaker. He is the author of Instant InDesign: Designing Templates for Fast and Efficient Page Layout. As an Adobe Certified Instructor, Gabriel teaches InDesign, InCopy, and other publishing applications to creative professionals throughout the United States and Western Europe. Gabriel specializes in automated publishing, template building, and developing XML publishing solutions. Check out Gabriel's blog and video podcast at www.instantindesign.com. If your company is interested in Gabriel's training services, check out his company's web site at http://www.metafusiontraining.com.

Gabriel spoke to us about some of the new features in InDesign CS4. Here are some of the ones he covered:

Live Prepress (red or green light at the bottom of the document window; double-click to open and review errors)
Cross References (found in the Hyperlinks panel)
Tabbed Browsing (documents are opened into tabs when several documents are open. Command+tilde (~) switches from one tab to another)
Smart Guides
Contact Sheet Place Mode
Smart Cursors (tells you the X and Y axis of whatever box you're moving, or the size of whatever box you're resizing)
Improved Links Panel
- can make the thumbnails in the Links panel bigger
- can customize what information is shown in the Links panel by choosing Panel

Options from the panel menu:

It's now possible to edit table text in the story editor (Edit > Edit In Story Editor)
Conditional Text (like layers but smarter, useful for different versions of the same document)
Export from InDesign CS4 to SWF or XFL and open in Flash (when you're creating a new document there are new size options specifically for screen sizes).
New Edit With command allows you to choose what program to open a placed file. (locate the command in either the Links panel menu, or control-click the image)
There are lots more powerful new tools than only those listed here. Those who are already using CS4 say it is very stable.

Gabriel also suggested a few things we might adjust as soon as we load InDesign CS4:

Turn on Advanced Workspace (Window > Workspace > [Advanced]).
Make your own preflight profile(s). In the Preflight Panel menu, choose Define Profiles.
Turn on Apply Leading To Entire Paragraphs by going to Type Preferences (makes InDesign apply leading like Quark does).

At the end of our meeting we had our Prize Giveaway. One lucky winner received Adobe CS4 Design Premium. Many other prizes, such as books, DVD training, and t-shirts were also given away.

If your company is interested in Sponsoring food and drink at an InDesign User Group meeting, please contact Brian Cupp at desmoines@indesignusergroup.com.

Brian Cupp
Chapter Representative
Des Moines InDesign User Group

Photos From This Meeting
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