Claudia McCue

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Don’t you just love the tabbed document display in Creative Suite 4 applications?

If you do, you’re in the minority, judging by the number of people who ask “How do I change that?” often followed by “What were they thinking?!” I can help a bit with the first question, but I can’t answer the second one. I guess it’s part of the increasing Macromediafication of the application interfaces: perhaps the flat gray architecture is meant to be chic and soothing, and maybe the tabs are intended to conserve screen real estate. Whatever the explanation, here are some tips for returning to the Land of Floating Windows, as nature intended.

Photoshop

Open Preferences > Interface. UNcheck “Open Documents as Tabs” and “Enable Floating Window Docking.” If you just uncheck “Open Documents as Tabs,” document windows will still insist on docking if they’re dragged near each other.

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InDesign

As in Photoshop, open Preferences > Interface and uncheck “Open Documents as Tabs” and “Enable Floating Window Docking.” Heave great sigh of relief.

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Illustrator

Alas, Illustrator only lets you get halfway there: You can turn off the option to open documents as tabs, but you can’t prevent documents from docking if you move them too close together. Some strange magnetic force compels them to huddle together for warmth.

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Feature Requests

Here’s an idea: if you dislike the tabbed interface, put a note in the suggestion box. Fill out the Feature Request form on the Adobe website and ask that this compulsive behavior be an option, not the default.

If you have to import Microsoft Word files and map Word styles to InDesign styles, here’s some good news. Although the option to save style mappings as presets was first offered in InDesign CS3, it didn’t work in CS4. The preset name was saved—but it was empty!

Now, the just-released 6.0.4 update fixes this shortfall, as well as some other issues. The PDF of the release notes can be found here.

Before you freak out, it’s not a common circumstance, nor is it a showstopper. Just thought you might like to know. Here’s the equation:

Place a layered PSD as an anchored object within a header or footer row in a multi-page threaded table, and then attempt to print to a PostScript printer. The job starts to print, then displays the above error dialog: “The Adobe Print Engine has failed to output your data due to an unknown problem.” Continue Reading »

The Smart Text Reflow feature in InDesign is quite useful: if you add more text to a multi-page story, new pages are generated at the end of the story, avoiding overset text. It’s on by default: you can turn it off, or you can modify the preferences so that Smart Text Reflow applies not just to master text frames. It can be a runaway train, but usually it’s an asset.

However, I’ve discovered an odd (and rare) bug with Smart Text Reflow. You’ll only encounter it under specific circumstances, if you perform the steps in a particular order. It happened to me while teaching an InDesign class, and it took some time to figure out that Smart Text Reflow was the culprit. I thought I’d spare you the aggravation by describing the problem so you can avoid it: Continue Reading »

Productivity can be cool: InDesign CS3 and CS4 allow you to select multiple files in the File>Place dialog, and this is a great way to get multiple text and graphics files into the page quickly.

But did you know you can shop among multiple folders as you’re gathering up files to place in the page? You can, but there’s a little trick required.

If you choose File>Place, select some files in a directory, then switch directories and select more files, you’ll only pick up the latest group of files — earlier selections are ignored.

But if you select files from one folder, then return to InDesign without clicking in the page, you can choose File>Place again, and gather up another bunch of files. When you return to InDesign, you’re carrying all the files you selected from all visited directories.

My thanks to Bob Bringhurst of Adobe Systems for adding a comment to the earlier post. I thought it deserved its own post, since he was kind enough to share: Bob’s blog post is here.

In the circumstance that prompted my earlier post, a customer needs to add a TOC to the first page of their multi-page InDesign files in order to generate bookmarks in the exported PDFs. That’s the only purpose the TOC serves. For various reasons having to do with workflow and tracking, they can’t add an extra page (this is a retail environment, and they’re using multiple pages to hold multiple versions).

The solution is a bit of a kludge, but it works: they create the TOC, and then position the TOC text frame in the pasteboard, overlapping the left edge of the page by just a skosh. The text itself is off in the pasteboard, and doesn’t appear in the page when the PDF is generated.

There’s (almost) always a way

If you generate a Table of Contents in a file (or book) in InDesign, hyperlinked bookmarks are automatically generated when you export to PDF with Hyperlinks and Bookmarks options checked in the export dialog. Bookmarks make it easy for readers of the PDF to find information quickly: displayed in the Navigation pane in Acrobat or Reader, they serve as a dynamic table of contents that’s always available.

Sometimes I want the bookmarks in the PDF, but without a visible table o’contents in the file. In the past, I’ve generated my TOC in InDesign, but put it in the pasteboard. The text isn’t visible in the PDF, but the bookmarks are created.

Today I discovered that this trick doesn’t work in InDesign CS4! Instead, the TOC text frame has to have at least an edge hanging into a document page for the bookmarks to be created. While this isn’t fatal, it’s weird that the functionality has changed.

In previous versions of InDesign, if you dragged a frame containing a graphic to a Library, the library item would be named by the filename of the graphic in the frame. If you dragged multiple objects, the group was just labeled “Untitled.” Fair enough; it’s page geometry, and it’s up to you to pick a name for the library item.

But in InDesign CS4, everything dragged to the Library is initially named “Untitled”— there’s no recognition of a graphic filename. Bummer!

There’s no mention of this in the user guide, and no options available in the Library panel to force it to behave as it did in all earlier versions. It’s like going into a real library, and finding that all the books just say “Book” on the spine!

I absolutely love the FOLDRite Template Master plug-in for InDesign. It’s a template creator and an educational resource, all rolled (well, folded) into one. It generates templates with correct panel sizes and an abundance of guidelines to keep you oriented. If you’ve done the math for a simple three panel fold-in brochure, you know it’s a bit of a challenge. But what about laying out much more complex pieces? Check out the FoldFactory site.

Not only the the FOLDRite Template Master plug-in generate complete templates, it provides extensive information about appropriate stocks for the form factor it’s created, along with advice about mailing issues and more.

And now you can have it for $99! If you build folded pieces, you really need this little gem. And check out “A Field Guide To Folding,” Trish Witkowski’s very readable and useful resource. If you want to dig deeper, consider her fantastic, encyclopedic instant classic, “FOLD: The Professional’s Guide To Folding.” At 850 pages, it will last you at least a week at the beach, but prepare you for a lifetime of first-class folding.

And since Trish is my Folding Hero, I may have to spring for the Trish Witkowski bobblehead doll, also available on the FoldFactory site. Way too cool!

It’s worth highlighting David Baldaro’s latest comment on the original post. There have been some discoveries.

“Folks, I’ve been chatting with the R&D team on this issue. For all the details check out my blog, http://david.baldaro.me.uk/2009/03/xmpie-and-the-missing-plug-in-issue/”

Here’s an excerpt from David’s blog:

[From one of the XMPie R&D folks]   “The problem that is experienced is a result of XMPie adding properties to certain components of the document. For example – A spread gets the property of whether it has a visibility ADOR or not. A box gets the property of whether it has text length handling (auto flow, copy fitting) and if so In what way.”

“The way this is implemented is by using the only technology available for this by Adobe which as a by-product forces that the properties are added to the document whether you actually place valid values or not (meaning – whether you set them or not).  If they are not set to specific values they simply get null values – but still the properties are there.  Since the properties are there taking the document and opening it in another InDesign installation provides a warning that there is no support for these properties – i.e. the “missing plug-in” warning.”

David continues:
“So, the answer here is not straight forward, and XMPie is talking to Adobe about this matter it would seem. Gal goes on to mention that they have seen this issue replicated in several other Adobe Plug-ins that make changes to the document in the same way; so it would seem that this is not solely an XMPie issue.

The best way to overcome this?
* You could always install the XMPie plug-in I guess; free-of-charge and fully functional from www.xmpie.com.
* If you are the creator of the document then disabling or removing the XMPie Plug-in; before resaving the document should work.
* Exporting the document to an INX or IDML file will also do it’s best to remove any conflicting tags.”

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My thanks to David for doing all this detective work. Clearly, the problem is not solely an XMPie issue: it seems that some of the normal interactions required for a plug-in may force the plug-in to modify the document in ways that permanently alter the underpinnings.

Have you encountered similar circumstances with a plug-in? We’d like to hear about it!