This Week in InDesign Articles, Number 23
It’s a deluge of articles and videos and good InDesign stuff to dive into! Whew. What a week it’s been. I’ve been envious reading Mike Rankin’s articles about the Tools of Change conference (must-reads if you’re on the cutting edge):
As I’m typing this, we’re still waiting for his day 3 roundup, but the guy was exhausted after all that learnin’ that I think he’s still sleeping!
I also wrote up my favorite free-script-of-the-week (involving cross-references). But there have also been a plethora of other good things out there in the inter-tubes recently:
Before that great x-refs script, Harbs came up with a couple of other freebies you should know about:
- First, a script that lets you enlarge text to fit a frame. This is great for headings. (It is similar to a feature in the Blatner Tools “Text Controls” plug-in.)
- Next, a free script that can scale all the graphics in your document by the same values. Powerful stuff!
I think it was Bob Levine who pointed out in Twitter (?) that Adobe sells “upsells” from PageMaker. If you still own a copy of PageMaker and you want to get InDesign, check out these links:
I love tables like this one, that show all the different codes for each character (such as ascii, html, and indesign unicode code).
CreativePro.com pointed out this awesome font made up of ampersands — buy it and help the victims in Haiti!
The folks at Ctrl-PS make several interesting plug-ins, including one called CrossTalk. This allows you to open InDesign files in InCopy without having to check in and check out, etc. I think it’s the way Adobe should have done it in the first place. Check out this video on their site about how it works.
Okay, I have to admit I’m curious about this one… they used php to convert html to InDesign tagged text! If anyone tries it, please let me know how it goes!
Our friend Jean-Claude Tremblay tweeted like crazy for a whole day about Illustrator and then compiled all his tips here on his site.
Eugene Tyson pointed out this very interesting blog about print and printing. I think I’d seen it before, but had forgotten it existed. I particularly enjoyed reading his article about moiré patterns.
Of course, you don’t want to miss Pariah Burke’s new round-up of free stuff at creativepro.com…
Mike McHugh at Creative Sweet TV recorded a great little video about getting Justified text to look juuuuust right… check it out! (I wonder if Mike is a kangatarian…. I’ll have to ask him about that…)
What would we do without rumors?! It’s 2010, so the rumor mill is gearing up with new talk of CS5.
And finally: Check out this awesome iPhone app that lets you play Lynda.com movies! Seems crazy, but I’ve been watching some of my own videos and it’s a far better experience that you’d expect. Very well done.
Enjoy!