<ul id=”twitter_update_list”><li></li></ul>

The empty item doesn’t matter as the tweet feed replaces the content for the list; given that there has been the odd occasion recently where the feeds have been unavailable you could use a list item like this:

<ul id=”twitter_update_list”><li>Oops! – Twitter isn’t working at the moment – sorry</li></ul>

Which will have the effect of placing the blame squarely on the shoulders to which it belongs.

You can click the link above to start following my Twitter feed.

You’ve created an SWF file, then inserted it into a page using Dreamweaver with the wmode = transparent parameter, but found that when testing it in Firefox on the Mac the background is still there! You check your code and it looks fine:

<param name=”wmode” value=”transparent” />

The answer should be fairly simple – don’t forget that code is added for IE and non-IE browsers so make sure that the mode is set inside BOTH object tags; if you use the parameters option in the Properties Inspector, then this should be set automatically but it’s always worth checking!

In the meantime, here’s a tip that I picked up a while back for making blurred text in InDesign – it’s appropriate at the moment!

Step 1: Create your text

Step 2: Select the text and set the fill to paper in the swatches panel

Step 3: In the Effects panel, set the blending mode of the text to Multiply and be sure to make sure that the knockout option is deselected.

Note: If you have the text sitting over a coloured background, it might look a little strange on your screen; turn on View: Overprint Preview (Shift-Cmd-Alt-Y) to see how it will look when it’s printed.

• on the Mac OS: Users\(User)\Library\Application Support\Adobe\Adobe Illustrator CS4\en_GB\New Document Profiles
• on Windows: Documents and Settings\(User)\Application Data\Adobe\Adobe Illustrator CS4 Settings\en_GB\New Document Profiles

Please note that I’m using the UK version in English, so the folder inside of the settings may be different if you’re using another language. The file might aso be hidden on some versions of windows if you want to access it directly (to make amodification to an existing preset, for example).

The profile will be available when you restart Illustrator.

The Essentials

• Shift-Alt-N = Normal
• Shift-Alt-M = Multiply
• Shift-Alt-O = Overlay
• Shift-Alt-S = Screen
• Shift-Alt-C = Colour
• Shift-Alt-U = Hue

The Complete List

• Shift-Alt-A = Linear Burn
• Shift-Alt-B = Colour Burn
• Shift-Alt-C = Colour
• Shift-Alt-D = Colour Dodghe
• Shift-Alt-E = Difference
• Shift-Alt-F = Soft Light
• Shift-Alt-G = Lighten
• Shift-Alt-H = Hard Light
• Shift-Alt-I = Dissolve
• Shift-Alt-J = Linear Light
• Shift-Alt-K = Darken
• Shift-Alt-L = Hard Mix
• Shift-Alt-M = Multiply
• Shift-Alt-N = Normal
• Shift-Alt-O = Overlay
• Shift-Alt-P = Airbrush Mode
• Shift-Alt-S = Screen
• Shift-Alt-T = Saturation
• Shift-Alt-U = Hue
• Shift-Alt-V = Vivid Light
• Shift-Alt-W = Linear Dodge (Add)
• Shift-Alt-X = Exclusion
• Shift-Alt-Y = Luminosity
• Shift-Alt-Z = Pin Light

You can also cycle through the modes using Shift-Alt-Plus (forward) and Shift-Alt-Minus (backward).

Alt-[ = move down through layers

Alt-] = move up through layers

Add Shift to the above and you’ll select them as you move through

Alt-, (Comma) = Select bottom layer

Alt-. (Period or ‘full stop’ for the Brits) = Select top layer

Click this link to watch a movie about it and visit the FC page here.

There are feeds from the Labs site which you can subscribe to in any feed reader – Firefox would be an excellent choice (if you’re using Apple Mail then it has a built in feed reader) so you can keep up with the latest developemnts at Adobe.

The feed URL’s are:

• RSS 1.0: http://weblogs.macromedia.com/labs/index.rdf
• RSS 2.0: http://weblogs.macromedia.com/labs/index.xml
• ATOM: http://weblogs.macromedia.com/labs/atom.xml

If you’re not using the world’s most popular browser already, you can download Firefox today!

Another random tip next Monday! Don’t forget that you can become a fan on my Facebook page.

Another random tip next Monday! Don’t forget that you can become a fan on my Facebook page.

The simplest way is to select the word/phrase/URL and then choose either the appropriate language from the menu in the control strip or choosing [no language] for something like a URL.

A little more involved but perhaps slightly more elegant is to create the relevant attribute as a character style, then (especially if you’re using Quick Apply) it is easy to apply rapidly and consistently.

Another random tip next Monday! Don’t forget that you can become a fan on my Facebook page.

Haven’t got CS4? Don’t worry, you can use the Lorem Ipsum Generator (or InDesign users could always use some placeholder text and paste it in).

Want a much larger preview of an image in Bridge and don’t want to open it? Simply press the spacebar and the selected image will jump to 100% or fill your screen (whichever comes soonest).

Mac users (at least those using Leopard) can also get similar behaviour in the Finder (with PDF’s and most image files) so double-bubble!

Don’t forget that you can become a fan on my Facebook page.

If there was one question I get asked all the time, irrespective of which application I’m training at the time, it would have to be, “How do I learn all the shortcuts?”

Here’s something that might help; the Adobe Air Creative Suite Shortcut App

I don’t think it’s going to put me out of a job anytime soon, but it is really good and might help! It is also a vast improvement on my first (and only) program – the InDesign Shortcuts app.

If you’ve ever started making a selection using the marquee tools in Photoshop – wishing that you’d started it somewhere else – then all you need to do (while still ‘drawing’ – don’t release the mouse button) is hold down the spacebar and you can move the selection around to where you want it to be. Don’t forget also that you can transform any selection too – this feature is often overlooked – by choosing Select > Transform Selection, and it’s worth also noting that you can access further transformation options by right-clicking.

Another random tip next Monday – don’t forget to become a fan on Facebook.

This image of how the Apple website might have looked if the web had existed in 1984 really made me smile – so easy to imagine it being real.

Blistering speeds with 1 meg of RAM – ah, that takes me back to my first whopping bank loan for 32mb…

Precise placement of Guides in Illustrator…

You don’t have to zoom in to 6400% to place your guides from the rulers with accuracy! Simply hold down the shift key whilst dragging them in and they’ll snap to the incremental divisions of the ruler.

Also, don’t forget that guides are selectable in Illustrator (as they are in InDesign, too) which means that you can select them and type a new value in the x or y fields in the options bar/control strip.

To change your ruler units without visiting the preferences dialog right-click in the rulers – and this works in Photoshop and InDesign, also.

Another Random Tip on Thursday! Don’t forget that you can become a fan on Facebook and follow me on Twitter

The power of the bracket keys [ ] in Photoshop!

It is fairly common to find people who know that the bracket keys [ ] will increase and decrease your brush size with any ‘painting’ tool in Photoshop, but did you know that if you add the shift key you can change the brush hardness?

Not enough? Then try this – before drawing with some of the shape tools the bracket keys will:

• Increase and decrease the corner radius of the rounded-rectangle tool
• Change the width of the line with the line tool (adding shift changes the increments to ten)
• Increase or decrease the number of sides with the polygon tool (adding shift changes the increments to ten)
• Cycle through the shapes in the shape picker with the custom shape tool (adding shift goes to the first and last shape)

I know that the graphic I cooked up for this post probably overstates their power (just a tad), but the very same keys:

• Combined with the alt key allows you to move up and down through your layers
• Combined with the shift key (shift + alt) allows you to select layers up and down from the current layer

So there you have it – my case for the most powerful pair of keys in Photoshop.

Another random tip on Monday, and don’t forget that you’re welcome to become a fan on Facebook and follow me on Twitter!

In Illustrator, to manually move a pattern inside an object just hold down the tilde key (looks like this ~ and on UK/US keyboards should be to the left of the z key) while you drag. Try it with the scale, rotate, shear and reflect tools, too!

Another Random Tip on Thursday. Don’t forget to become a fan on Facebook or follow me on Twitter!

• To collapse a block of selected code, use shift-Cmd-C (shift-Ctrl-C on Windows)
• To collapse everything else outside of the selected code, add the option or alt key to the previous shortcut
• To un-collapse everything, use Cmd-alt-E (Ctrl-alt-E on Windows)

Another Random Tip on Monday. Don’t forget to become a fan on Facebook, or follow me on Twitter.

Why am I reading this? Because I’m running a web masterclass this week and as I’ve been doing Photoshop almost exclusively for several weeks fancied a bit of a refresher. It’s also a beautiful book and one of my favourites.

Why should you buy it? This book (spawned from the CSS Zen Garden website) offers an analysis of some of the designs used on the Zen Garden and a look into the whole process. Topics covered include design, layout, images, typography, special effects and reconstruction (which looks at the design process for six of the featured designs). If you have a basic understanding of CSS then this will take you from walking pace to warp 8.

• My time – I’m working on my book and a new podcast series (the sponsor-driven evolution of 4T, which is why it’s all been a bit quiet there recently) and of course trying to lead a normal family life
• My job and the travel demands shorten my available free-time (see above)
• The feedback statistics for the dependant pages dropped dramatically

Sorry – but at least it gives you a whole week to work on perfecting each tip!

Photoshop CS4 has a neat little function called Spring-Loaded Tools which can save you lots of time if you need to frequently switch between tools whilst working, provided you know the ‘quick keys’ or ‘Tool Shortcuts’  (they’re actually called single key accelerators) for the tools.

Imagine for example, you’re drawing (with the Pencil tool) and you need to keep switching between that and the Eraser; you could hit E on your keyboard (to switch to the Eraser) do whatever it is you want to do and then hit B to return to the Pencil tool. Now in CS4, all you’d need to do is simply hold down the E key for the time you were using the Eraser and as soon as you release that key you’d be back in the Pencil tool.

Although a tiny change, you’ll be surprised how much quicker this makes you – give it a try!

Don’t know any tool shortcuts? Next Monday’s tip will have a few to get you started…

Don’t forget to become a fan on Facebook, or follow me on Twitter.

Discovering the keys on your keyboard that activate a particular tool is pretty straightforward – simply hover over the tool in the toolbox and you’ll see it in the tooltip that appears or when you click and hold on a nested toolset (like the marquee tools, for example) you’ll actually see the letter there.

Some tools have the same shortcut, and you can cycle between them by adding the shift key (you can turn that behaviour – the need for the shift key – on and off in the preferences).

Here are some of the shortcuts along with some suggestions for how you might remember those that aren’t so obvious; those that are followed by a letter I or Id mean that the shortcut is exactly the same in Illustrator or InDesign (some will also work in other products – see for yourself!)

• V – the Move Tool; perhaps you could think of this as being a pointer, like the system’s own arrow. I Id
• A – the Direct Selection Tool or Path Selection Tool; you could think “Actually I want to select the path or this point on the path.” I Id
• W – the Quick Selection Tool or Magic Wand Tool.
• M – the Rectangular and Elliptical Marquee Tools.
• I – the Eyedropper Tool. I Id
• B – the Brush Tool, Pencil Tool and Colour Replacement Tool (all brushes of sorts). I
• P – the Pen Tool. I Id
• R – the Rotate Tool
• E – the Eraser Tools (including the Background and Magic variants).
• G – the Gradient Tool and Paint Bucket Tool; you could perhaps think “Get this filled with a gradient, colour or pattern.” (I Id – Gradient tool only).
• T – the Type Tool. I Id
• O – the Dodge, Burn and Sponge Tools; if you’re used to a traditional darkroom you could perhaps think of the O as the end of the “lollipop” for dodging, the shape made by your hand for burning, and a sponge looks a bit like an O I suppose… otherwise perhaps you could think Overexpose as a starting point?
• U – the vector tools including the Rectangle, Rounded Rectangle, Ellipse, Polygon, Line and Custom Shape; how about “You want to use a vector in Photoshop?”…
• Y – the History Brush and Art History Brush; I must confess that my own way of remembering this is “Why would anyone use the Art History Brush ordinarily” (but that’s just me).
• J – the healing tools (Spot, Healing, Patch, Red-eye); perhaps “Just clear that up, and it’ll look great.”

Of course, I welcome your own suggestions!

Don’t forget to become a fan on Facebook, or follow me on Twitter.

If you want to watch the previous one – here it is.

Want to create a quick contact sheet in InDesign? Using Multi-place you can select all the files you want included, then hold down Command-Shift (Ctrl-Shift on the PC) and start dragging – you’ll see a grid appear. After you start dragging let go of the keys, but don’t release the mouse button – you can then use the Left, Right, Up and Down Arrow keys to change the number of rows and columns for your layout; release the mouse button and you’ll end up with a nicely spaced arrangement of images.

Don’t forget to become a fan on Facebook, or follow me on Twitter.

Colour Blindness

Preparing graphics for the web? Do you ever consider how they might look to some of your target audience who have some form of colour blindness?

There are plug-ins available for Photoshop (try this one: http://www.vischeck.com/downloads/) but in CS4 you can also do a quick check for red and green types by going to View > Proof Setup > Color Blindness – Protanopia-type | Deuteranopia-type.

If you want to do a check for other types you could use this resource at Colblindor: http://www.colblindor.com/coblis-color-blindness-simulator/

Don’t forget to become a fan on Facebook, or follow me on Twitter.

Don’t forget to become a fan on Facebook, or follow me on Twitter.

Dreamweaver’s Code Navigator allows you to quickly jump to the CSS rules connected with an item – all you need to do is Cmd-Alt-Click (Ctrl-Alt-Click on the PC) and you’ll see all the rules applied to your selection; click on one of those and you’ll be taken straight to that code!

Don’t forget to become a fan on Facebook, or follow me on Twitter.

If you need to keep revisiting parts of an illustration, or artboards – save them as a view; simply go to View > New View… and give it a meaningful name – it’ll be added to the View Menu.

Don’t forget to become a fan on Facebook, or follow me on Twitter.

In Illustrator, ever tried erasing parts of objects with brushes applied or vector effects and been surprised by the results (as in the above example)? The answer is that Illustrator now sees new objects to apply the effects to – so you’ve got to expand the object(s) beforehand by choosing Object > Expand Appearance.

Don’t forget to become a fan on Facebook, or follow me on Twitter.

Type ‘Styles’ for Photoshop

Creating simple ‘styles’ for type in Photoshop is really easy – set up the type the way you want it to be, and save that as a tool preset – just click the big, often overlooked icon at the left of the Control Strip and from the panel menu of the panel that appears – choose New Tool Preset and it’ll be there for you to use. Don’t forget to save the tool presets (from the same panel menu) if you want to keep them.

Don’t forget to become a fan on Facebook, or follow me on Twitter.

In Photoshop, if you’d rather resize text a little more dynamically simply use the following shortcut: Cmd-Shift-> to increase the size and cmd-Shift-< to decrease (of course, substitute the CTRL key on Windows) and if you want to move in larger increments, add the alt/option key in to the mix for increments of ten.

One of the obscure modes of the Crop Tool is the ability to fix perspective at the same time as making a crop. To use the mode, all you need to do is check the perspective check-box in the option bar which allows you to drag the corner handles independently so you can position the box edges along the lines you want to crop to which will result in a rectangular image that has been distorted to that box.

I’m willing to bet that most Dreamweaver users have overlooked the History panel and you should become familiar with it for a couple of good reasons:
Firstly and perhaps most obviously it allows you to quickly move to an earlier state without hitting Undo several times  – well, d’uh – but I think that the feature you might find most useful is the ability to repeat certain sequences and operations from within the panel, and also save them as commands – they’ll be added to the Commands menu (you’ll know if something can’t be used or replayed as it will be clearly marked with a red X in the panel).

Normally the History panel is document-specific but if you add a sequence as a command then it’s available to all documents and if you’re using menu items normally buried in a sub-menu (as a lot of the dynamic features are) it can be well worth the ‘effort’.

All we need now Adobe, is an easy way to add a shortcut to those commands…

If your code gets a bit messy in Dreamweaver don’t forget that you’ve got the Format Source Code command which can be found in the Commands menu or in the coding toolbar (it’s the last icon at the very bottom) – one click and you’re done. You can edit the formatting settings in the Dreamweaver preferences dialog if they don’t meet your requirements by default (which can also be accessed via the button in the coding toolbar); really useful!

Extra advance content will become available in January for subscribers and even more for Twitter followers and Facebook fans – use the link on the right to become a fan today.

If you’d like a ‘WYSIWYG’ preview of how a particular typeface will look on your text in InDesign then highlight the text with the Type Tool, use the shortcut Cmd-6 (ctrl-6 on Windows) which will shift the focus to the first available input field on the control strip and then use your up and down arrows on the keyboard.

Happy Holidays to you all – the Random Tip will return on the 4th January!

It is the time of year when a lot of us start tackling the bit of ‘extra’ we might have picked up over the previous year and especially over the holiday period, if your InDesign files are starting to get a bit bloated, the answer is as simple as doing a Save As and overwriting the original with a new slimmer copy! InDesign saves lots of information as you work and this clears out that extra bit and gives you a leaner, meaner file – if only it was that easy for the rest of us!

Dreamweaver can give you information about the specificity of a CSS rule when you turn on rules view in the CSS panel, then if you hover over a selector you’ll get specificity information in a comma-delimited format like this 0,2,0,2.

To calculate specificity you count within each selector the number of inline styles, id’s, classes and element names – so in the pictured example the selector is #wrap #sidebar ul li which contains no inline styles (0,2,0,2) two id’s (0,2,0,2) no classes (0,2,0,2) and two element names (0,2,0,2).

Find out more about the cascade, inheritance and specificity with Zoe Gillenwater’s CSS Cheat Sheet, peruse the specification or book some training on my 2010 Web Masterclass or Dreamweaver ACA at Certitec in Cardiff.

My nickname for the PS ACE Prep course that I deliver at Certitec in Cardiff is “Photoshop Top Gun” and now – just for fun – every delegate that completes the course is given their own ‘handle’, just like the aviators. Out of the four taking the course at the beginning of this week only two made it to the end – one delegate baled at the last minute and another had to eject halfway through. It is a gruelling two days designed to really shake you down and identify the areas where your knowledge is weak so that you might work on them and become hopefully exam-ready at a future point in time. You also pick up some excellent tips and tricks, and see areas of Photoshop that you probably didn’t even know existed – so it is worthwhile if you want to see how good you really are and see where you can develop your skills.

My congratulations then to Sharon Cohen who will be known from now as “Smoky” and Grace Elliott who has become “Kestrel”. They at least now know where to direct their efforts before attempting to take the exam if they choose to do so and even if they don’t they now have an idea of just how big a beastie Photoshop is…

If you’re one of my small-but-steadily-growing Facebook fans then you’ll also get 20% off the cost of the course – that’ll save you about seventy quid by my reckoning!! I must point out that the offer can’t be used in conjunction with any other run by Certitec, is only available by booking directly with them and is also subject to verification (they’ll email me to make sure that you are ‘on the list’).

Support files are available to registered users of the site only. Please Login or Register to access the link.

• Introduces the Multiscreen Preview panel , allowing for Live View display on 3 different screen sizes, with Media Query support. (Window > Multiscreen Preview)
• Adds code hinting for the HTML5 Tag Library with new tags, attributes, and properties.
• Updates code hinting for new attributes and values in existing HTML tags.
• Adds code hinting for the following CSS3 specifications: 2D/3D Transformations; Animations; Background and Border; Basic User Interface; Line Layout; Marquee; Media
• Queries; MultiColumn; Ruby; Text; and Transitions.
• Updates Live View to support <video> and <audio>. (Requires Quicktime installation.)
• Improved rendering for CSS3 in Live View.
• Adds HTML5 starter layouts to the New Document Dialog box.
• Offers better rendering for new tags in Design View.

The pack is available from the Adobe Labs site – http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/html5pack/

It’s  all things Photoshop for me at the moment and so I thought I’d share a different tip (for users at all levels) with you every day this week.

Although this is a newbie tip really I am quite often surprised to find out how many seasoned users have let this one escape their attention. You can reset quite a few Adobe dialogs by holding down the alt/option key – the Cancel button will change to Reset saving you from exiting the dialog and invoking it again.

Like I said, a tip for new users essentially, but you really would be surprised how often I see that though!

To fill a selection or the background/current layer with the foreground colour, most users know the shortcut alt-backspace – in my experience slightly lesser known is that you can also use cmd-backspace to fill with the background colour, cmd-alt-backspace to fill from the currently selected history state, cmd-shift-backspace to fill with the background and preserve the transparency (of a layer) and cmd-alt-shift-backspace to fill from the history and preserve the transparency. If you’re on Windows, substitute cmd with ctrl

Also it is well worth learning the shortcut to launch the fill dialog box which gives you a lot more options, and if you’re using CS5 then you also get quick access to the content aware fill option.

Another tip tomorrow!

Hey, Tony; I have a load of images that I need to convert to [JPEG | TIFF | PSD], and I’d also like to set their size to fit a scheme and maybe a couple of other things – like add copyright info and perhaps run some actions… could I write one big action that does all that?

The answer of course is yes, but herein lies another great undiscovered Photoshop nugget – the Image Processor, which you’ll find in the scripts menu (File > Scripts > Image Processor) – it’s really easy to figure out and if you want to run more than one action, just create a ‘parent’ action that runs the other actions you require.

This will save you ages!

Need to open a flattened version of a layered Photoshop file? In the open dialog, hold down shift and alt as you click open – Photoshop will ask you if you want to read the composite data; click OK and you’ll get a flattened version – really useful if you want a quick look at a file that has tons of layers.

Here’s a nice one for the weekend – with a few juicy shortcuts thrown in – to turn a photo into a pencil-like sketch (PC users substitute Ctrl for Cmd):

1. Open a suitable image
2. Add a black and white adjustment layer, tune as required
3. Create a new merged copy layer – Cmd-alt-shift-E
4. Duplicate the layer – cmd-J
5. Invert that layer – Cmd-I
6. Change the blending mode to Colour Dodge – Shift-alt-D
7. Run the Gaussian Blur filter and tune as required

Enjoy!

Photoshop Week went down quite well, so from this Monday (14th June) for the next two working weeks we’ll be having InDesign Fortnight – Ten Working Days, Ten Tips That Work! The tips are going to be for users at all levels, and there will be at least one video tip each week, too.

Welcome to InDesign Fortnight!

The idea is to give you ten tips over the next ten working days that work for you – for users of all levels. There will be at least one video tip each week and please feel free to comment on the posts and/or make suggestions for future features – if there’s something you want to learn in any of the Design Premium applications, let me know!

Today, we’re going to look at how a character style can help us with dynamic spelling – there are three parts to this particular tip, getting Dynamic Spelling set up, creating the Character Style and applying the Character Style quickly. This tip will work in InDesign CS5, CS4 and CS3.

Dynamic Spelling

Dynamic Spelling can be enabled by going to the preferences (on a Mac, InDesign > Preferences > Spelling | on a PC, Edit > Preferences > Spelling) and checking the box as shown in the above image, or by choosing Edit > Spelling > Dynamic Spelling from the menu system. Whenever InDesign comes across a word it doesn’t recognise (ID checks against the current language dictionary) it will ‘flag’ it – if you’ve ever used a product like Microsoft Word, you’ll be familiar with it straight away.

Setting up the Character Style

Select the Type Tool (Fastest Route: Tap T on your keyboard) and make sure that the control strip is in character mode (look at the buttons on the extreme left on the strip – you’ll see an A button – that’s the one you want selected).

Power User Tip: you can switch between the Character and paragraph options by using cmd-alt-7 (ctrl-alt-7 on a PC)

There are several ways that we can create character styles, but for now we’ll click the character style button in the control strip and choose New Character Style from the context menu that appears.

The first thing we’re going to need to do here is to give the style a name – I’ve named mine 01noLanguage – you’ll perhaps see why I chose to start this with a number later on. We’re going to make this style as flexible as possible, so we only need to change one thing here – from the categories on the left-hand side of the dialog box, choose Advanced Character Formats; you’ll see the last item on the right now is a drop-down for language and you can choose [No Language] from there. That’s it – done – you can click OK and close the dialog. By not specifying anything else the only attribute that will be modified by this style is the spelling language, which means we can use it on headings as well as body text and so on.

Applying the Style Quickly

Here’s the really powerful bit of this tutorial – and I’m still surprised to find how many users don’t know of its existence despite it being around for absolutely ages now: Quick Apply. To invoke Quick Apply all you need to do is hold down cmd on a mac, ctrl on a pc and hit return – the quick apply dialog will appear. The example shown is using my default spelling of English, and the word Repoussé appears quite often – it’s spelt correctly, just in French and so InDesign (which is currently using an English dictionary) flags it. We could have set the language to French earlier on, but I chose the no language option here so I can apply it in several different instances in my document – think about using it on a URL fro example (which of course is ok provided you know that the word is spelt correctly in the first place… ).

If you are working along with this and want the same text as I’m using here simply copy the quote below and paste it into an InDesign document.
Note: Just in case you’re wondering – Repoussé is a new feature in Photoshop CS5.

Using Repoussé
The term repoussé describes a metalworking technique in which object faces are shaped and patterned by hammering on the opposite side. In Photoshop, the Repoussé command converts 2D objects into 3D meshes, which you can precisely extrude, inflate, and reposition in 3D space.

So, let’s select the word (I’m going to assume you’re using the same text as me now) we want to apply our style to – with the Type Tool selected double click on the word Repoussé – then invoke Quick Apply as described above. All you need to do now is hit zero on your keyboard (remember that we named the style beginning with a zero) which will highlight your no language character style and hit return again to apply it – you’re done. This is a technique that’s fairly easy to pick up, and with practice you can perform a range of actions quicker this way than almost any other method – investigate and find out more about Quick Apply on the Adobe InDesign Help pages.

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You can find out much more about InDesign, meet other users and win great prizes – join an official Adobe InDesign user group near you: http://www.indesignusergroup.com/chapters/index.php?ref=menu

Safari 5 is out and it’s really fast, but the thing that really grabs me is the new Reader function – the browser detects when an article is available and the reader button appears in the address bar – or you can use the shortcut Shift-Cmd-R – and the article dispalys in a clutter-free modal view. I love it!

The text size can be changed by using cmd = | cmd - and you can reset the text zise by using Cmd-0. You can exit the reader by tapping esc (or by using the Shift-Cmd-R shortcut  or by clicking the reader button again).

There’s also a new Nitro rendering engine, even greater HTML5 support (yay!) an improved web inspector and hardware acceleration for pc users.

Welcome to Day 2 of InDesign Fortnight – although most of the tips in this feature will apply to several versions, there is one feature of InDesign CS5 I think has to be among the most requested that I come across regularly; ‘straddle heads’ (as I’ve always known them, anyway) are headlines and perhaps bylines that span columns. InDesign CS5 allows you to span columns and also split them simply by selecting text and choosing the option you want from a drop-down. here are a couple of examples that will show you how to use it.

Splitting text

Here we have a single story in a single-column text box.

Select the text, then locate the Span Columns button in the control strip…

or if you have got the Paragraph panel open choose ‘Span Columns‘ from the panel menu…

Choose the number of columns you’d like your text split into…

and the text splits into two sub-columns. Below shows the same technique applied to a list inside a block of text.

Spanning Columns

Here we have a text box which is split into two columns (cmd-B on the Mac, ctrl-B on the pc to access the text frame options)…

select the headline text, then choose Span 2 from the Span Columns drop-down…

and the text now spans two columns.

Fine Tuning

If you want to modify the gutter (space between columns) or add some space-before and space-after values, then you’ll need to select span columns from the paragraph panel menu or the control strip panel menu (as far on the right at the top as you can go, usually) then choose Span Columns… from the context menu (shown below).

From there you’ll have the options as shown.

Advanced Tip: Span columns can also be set as part of a paragraph style!

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Relinking Files

Relinking individual files is pretty simple – in the links panel, select the file you want to relink and click the relink button – you can also do this with multiple files selected in the links panel.

Relinking to a Folder

Sometimes though, you want to relink a whole bunch of files to a completely different set of files. Here’s a scenario that you may come across from time-to-time – a client emails you a bunch of low-resolution JPEG files to use in a document, and mails a disc over with the full-resolution files on (PSD’s, TIFF’s or whatever).

While you wait for the disc to arrive, you work on your layout using the low-res files. All you need to do when the disc arrives is (probably copy the files to a hard drive then…) select the files to be relinked in the links panel and choose Relink to Folder from the links panel’s panel menu.

You’ll get a dialog box asking you to locate the folder and you have a couple of options there – to match the filename and extension, or to match the filename and specify a new extension – simply type the file extension in the input box and ID will play an enhanced game of ‘Snap” while you sit back and relax – for a few seconds – it’s really fast.

Relink File Extension

This is a new feature in InDesign CS5 and I find this really useful. Quite often files sent from clients – usually JPEG’s these days – need a little work afterwards; I always save JPEG files as PSD’s (in the same folder – you can create this as an action in Photoshop, too) when working on them so I can work non-destructively and all that’s needed when back in InDesign is to select the files I’ve worked on in the links panel then choose Relink File Extension from the panel menu. The dialog that appears asks for the file extension and that’s it – done!

Advanced Tip: This is also really useful if you use Quicktime Movies in your interactive ID files and want to update them to FLV, F4V or MP4 – you can convert the files using the Adobe Media Encoder and then use Relink File Extension to replace them.

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Welcome to day four of InDesign Fortnight – Today we’re going to look at one of my favourite topics – creative suite integration between InDesign and placed Photoshop and Illustrator files. Even though I’ve done this many times at different events, and hundreds of times with classes, I’m still really surprised to find how many users (even those who’ve been using ID for quite a while) don’t really explore the options available to them with linked graphics files, or really use the advantages offered by integrating with Photoshop and Illustrator. We’re going to take a look at using layer options when we import a file and when the file is placed. If you’re in a situation where you are creating multiple versions of a file, this is probably going to save you lots of work, more than likely going to save you disk space and definitely going to make you faster.

A PSD File, in its Natural Environment.

As you can see from the layers panel, there are three different background colours here – I’m not sure which of these my client is going to want to use, and there’s also the chance that I’ll just have to use the picture of the woman on her own too – to save time later I’ve created four layer comps in Photoshop, one of each background colour and one with just the woman on transparency.

Placing the PSD file in InDesign

In the InDesign layout we can place the file by using the shortcut cmd-D (ctrl-D on Windows) or go to File > Place – make sure that Show Import Options is selected at the bottom of the dialog asking you to locate the file.

Next you’ll get the options dialog, and one of the tabbed options you will have there is layers – you’ll be able to see all of the layers in the Photoshop file and choose which you want to use when you place the file; if you’ve used layer comps then there’s a drop-down for that, too.

Changing you mind

If you need to change the view later on, there’s no relinking to another file necessary – simply right-click on the image and select Object Layer Options and you can make the modifications you need.

I sometimes use this when I want to show a client different versions of a file; place the first version and the alt-drag copies from it – then choose the object layer options on the copies to show the different versions – you can then send them a PDF or share your screen and get them to choose.

Illustrator Files

AI files have the same options, but there is a twist – and this one can save you loads of time, if you ever have to present different versions of the same art in the kind of scenario I’m going to use here. In the file I’m using, I have three versions of a graphic: one in full colour, one in greyscale and one in mono; each version is on its own layer.

Placing the AI File in InDesign

Again, when placing the file, make sure that Show Import Options is selected at the bottom of the place dialog and then you’ll get the Place PDF options (Illustrator files are PDF compatible); from the Options section, choose Bounding Box (in IDCS5, you’ll have two bounding box options – for this choose the one for Visible Layers Only). Next, click the layers tab in the dialog and turn on the visibility for just the layer you want to use now – on the version here I’ve selected the colour layer by alt-clicking on the visibility icon (which turns off the other two layers straight away).

Quick Change

If you find you suddenly need a greyscale or mono version of the graphic instead, again there’s no running off to place another file or relinking – simply right-click and again choose Object Layer Options; alt-clcik the visibility icon for the version you require and click OK – you’re done. Because all three graphics are exctly the same size in Illustrator, they won’t shift in InDesign – it simply swaps them over – perfect; it often isn’t necessary at all to have loads of different file versions all over the place – work smarter!

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It’s the end of the first week of InDesign Fortnight and in this special edition of the Suite Spot podcast I’ll be getting you started with special finishes in InDesign.

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Welcome to the second week of InDesign Fortnight – we’re going to begin this week by taking a look at lists, starting today with bulleted lists and continuing tomorrow with numbered lists and nested or multilevel lists. Although this particular tip is aimed at fairly new users, there’s a nugget or two in here for those of you with a bit more experience, too.

Creating a Bulleted List

To create a bulleted list on the fly, all you need to do is to be in a text frame and click the Bulleted List button – which you can usually find with the paragraph options in the control strip…

…any text you had selected will be formatted, or anything you type afterwards will be formatted.

Accessing the Options.

Alt-clciking on the Bulleted List button will bring up the Bullets and Numbering dialog, from which you can set up your list in more detail.

Firstly, you can choose a character to use as your bullet. A small selection is there by default, but you can add (and remove) a character from any font on your system to that list by clicking the buttons to the right of the available choices.

Advanced tip: if you’ve ever wondered what the little red u is for in the corner of some of the presets, it means that the character is specified by its Unicode value, and is not font-specific. You can specify this by deselecting the Remember Font with Bullet option in the Add dialog, although you’ll need to make sure that it is a character that is present in the font you’re using.

Next, you can specify what follows your bullet (and precedes your item). This is usually populated with a metacharacter such as ˆt but you can type anything in here – including the metacharacters if you know them – or there is a list available just to the right of the field, as shown above.

The next option is to specify a character style for your bullet. InDesign CS4 and CS5 allow you to create a style from inside this menu if you don’t already have one – in the example shown I’m creating a style named ‘red’ that changes the character colour, so I’ll end up with a red bullet.

Finally in this dialog, and this is where the waters can become somewhat muddy, are the options for positioning. Whereas ordinarily – with text – alignment relates to the frame edge and your paragraph, here it is concerning the bullet and which part of the bullet – left-edge, centre or right-edge as the reference point for the first-line indent.

The diagram above tries to illustrate this; choosing left alignment, the reference point would be the left edge (A), centre alignment (B) and right alignment (C).

If you’re likely to have more than single lines for your list items, then you’re going to need to set indents. Begin with the Left Indent, this specifies how far the lines after the first line are indented. After that, set the First Line Indent, this specifies where the bullet or number is positioned and is normally a negative value of the Left Indent – for example, if you have a left indent of 5mm, your first line indent would be -5mm.

The Tab Position field allows you to specify where InDesign will move the list item to if the distance between the number and the list item reaches zero (obviously this doesn’t really apply to bullets here, as they retain a constant width).

Styling Your List.

The intelligent way to work is almost always to create your list styles as a paragraph style, and all of the options here are present under the Bullets and Numbering category in the Paragraph Style dialog. If you’ve got more than one single instance of your list in your document, or if you want to be able to use the same formatting in other documents with the minimum of effort – turn it into a style!

Sorting Your Items.

If you’ve got a list and you’d like to sort it into ascending or descending alphabetical order, then there is help at hand! In InDesign CS4, go to Window > Automation > Scripts, CS5 users: Window > Utilities > Scripts to bring up the Scripts panel. Once you’ve got that open (and making sure that your list is selected) then inside the Scripts panel, open the Samples folder, then the JavaScript folder and double-click the sortParagraps.jsx script; a dialog will appear – choose the options you want (really straightforward) and click OK – job done!

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Yesterday we took a look at bulleted lists, today we’re going to take a look at numbered lists and nested lists – lists inside a list item.

If you’re a registered use of this site, you can use the link below to download an InDesign CS4 copy of the file I’m using here (zip archive).

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Creating Your List

Creating a numbered list is remarkably similar at the outset to creating a bulleted list (see yesterday’s post: http://bit.ly/9t7EFP) but there are more options to be explored and some powerful features that make working with more complex multilevel lists much easier.

For that reason,  although the same ‘one-click’ functionality is available in the options bar, it is best to work with numbered lists inside a style for all but the simplest single-instance lists. Not only that, but to allow InDesign to manage the list numbers across stories and even documents (in the case of a book file) it is best to begin by defining a list.

Defining Your List

To do so, go to Type > Bulleted & Numbered Lists > Define Lists.

All you need to do here is to click the New button and name your new list (my example is called adobeProductList). Completing this step enables InDesign to do three things, two of which can be determined in this dialog – enabling the continuation of list numbers across stories and/or books, and additionally list levels – the key to multilevel lists.

Creating a Style for the Top Level of the List

With a text cursor placed inside one of the paragraphs to be at the top (first) level of my list, We’re going to create a new paragraph style. Making sure to check the Apply Style to Selection and Preview boxes, we can begin by naming the style – my example here is called productListMain – then set some simple text attributes (font, size, style, space before/after and so on); after that I’m going straight to the Bullets and Numbering category. As soon as you choose numbers from the List Type drop-down, you’ll see your text change and a number is inserted before the list item.

Next, associate your paragraph style with your list from the earlier step, although if you’d missed that out you can see that – just as with character and paragraph styles – you’ve got the option to create a new list from inside this dialog; choose your list from the drop-down and leave the Level field set at 1.

Now to choose the numbering format – I’m going to keep the top level of my list with the default numbering (1,2,3…). The number field is next and you’ll see that this is already populated with some metacharacters – ^#.^t . All they add up to is a number (^#) – to be precise, this actually means the current number from this level) – followed by a period (.) and then a tab (^t). Let’s decide not to have the tab character at this level and replace it with something else; highlight the ^t and then from the menu over to the right of the field, choose Insert Special Character > EnSpace – you’ll get a new metacharacter that looks something like this: ^>.

Now to add a character style for the number – there’s a good reason for doing this – the number will take on the style of the list item, which means that if you have a list item that has an italic style on it for example, then the number will take on that style. I created a style from inside the dialog that set the character format to regular with a red colour. Leave the Mode drop-down set to Continue from Previous Number. As there may be more than nine items at this level, we’ll set the alignment options to Right so that single and multiple digit numbers will align correctly. We’ll finish off this style by creating some indent for the numbers (I’ve gone for 10mm in my example); in this list there will only be single words so there’s no need for us to set a negative first-line indent. We can now click OK and a few moments later (using Quick Apply – if you’ve never come across it before read the section ‘applying the style quickly’ from day one of InDesign Fortnight) the top-level items are styled.

Creating the Next Level of the List

This is where the nested part comes in, and you’ve probably already guessed how it’s done – all we need to do is create a new paragraph style for the next level of the list, associating it with our existing list (that’s the magic step). With a text cursor inside one of the nested items, we can create a new paragraph style (mine is called productListDetail) and continue as before by setting the basic text attributes. When we get to the Bullets and Numbering category, again choose numbers from the List Type drop-down and then choose your list from the List menu – this time set the Level field to 2.

We can now set the format – I’m choosing letters (a, b, c…) for this level – and then turn our attention to the format field. This time, we’ll click before the current number metacharacter (^#) and from the menu on the right choose Insert Number Placeholder > Level 1 – if you’ve got preview turned on you should be seeing 1a now at the front of the list item. If you want, you could copy my example – I’ve manually added some parenthesis around the current number metacharacter, removed the period and replaced the tab with another En space: ^1(^#)^> is how it looks. After that it’s just a matter of playing with the indents to get them looking good and you’re done!

Converting the Numbers for the Clipboard

Something you need to keep in mind is that the numbers are added almost like an effect to your paragraphs – they don’t actually ‘exist’ as such (try selecting them – you’ll be there awhile) and this can cause you a problem should you need to paste the text into another application (like Keynote, Word or Powerpoint for example). The workaround is to copy the text into a new text frame (so you don’t ruin the flexibility of your original), then select it, and go to Type > Bulleted & Numbered Lists > Convert Numbering to Text – you’ll then be able to copy that text and paste it into your other application.

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Although probably not one of the show-stopping features of InDesign CS5, the new options for captions are a great productivity bonus for so many document types – and every little helps.

Static Captions

Of the two kinds of captions available you’re likely to come across static captions first – you’ll notice that when you import an image there’s an additional option available in the bottom of the import dialog: Create Static Caption.

Placing an image

Placing the image caption

This will generate you a text box at the same time and by default will contain the file name of the file being placed – although this can be modified in the preferences. Any changes to the content of the box will need to be modified manually, but at least you get a frame populated with some text ready to work on.

Live Captions

The power of this feature comes from InDesign CS5′s increased support for metadata – data stored in a file about the file – and it is becoming more and more an essential part of everyday workflows (especially cross-media and variable data publishing), so if you’re not familiar with this already then now might be a good time to start learning! Just an aside for a moment – if you want to have a look at a ‘metadata panel’ go to File > File Info… (in InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, etc.) and you’ll see just how much data can be added to the file – you can also use Bridge to add/edit metadata for several files at once. To find out more about metadata in general – and how it enhances the file (searchability…) – try reading more on Wikipedia for starters and follow that up with a link (on the same page) to the Adobe eXtensible Metadata Platform: XMP.

Now that’s out of the way, back to Live Captions – the best place to start is with caption setup, that can be accessed from Object > Captions > Caption Setup. From here you can set up exactly what you want your caption to include – you can type directly into the two available fields, or add special characters from the small menus to the right of each field.

The drop-down in the middle gives you access to the different metadata you can add – there’s a lot – and if you need still more then  there are two icons at the end of the row that allow you to add and remove more. After that, you can determine the position and style of the caption – these attributes can be set and applied to static captions also – such as where the caption appears, the caption’s offset, paragraph style and even the layer on which the caption is placed.

The important thing to know once you’re out of the dialog is that the frame containing the caption must be either touching an imported file’s frame or grouped with it (the option to do that does also exist in the Caption Setup dialog) – if not you’ll get text inside the frame with the words <No Intersecting Link>.

Adding captions to links that are already placed is simple, too – right-click the link and choose Captions > Generate Live Caption or simply create a copy from an existing caption by alt-dragging it to the other links and it should update with the new data.

You can also convert your live captions to static captions (right-click and choose Captions > Convert to Static Caption) and indeed it may be necessary at certain times to do so – the captions are essentially a text variable and text variables don’t wrap; if you have a particularly long text string in a description for example, it may have to be converted so that you can wrap the text.

BTW – this works with other placed files, not just images – even placed ID files!

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Here’s one that can be used if you’ve got any strictly repeating structure and one of the tricks that I love presenting – it’s so much formatting applied with just one click.

I’m using a document containing some soccer fixtures – it has everything we need in the way of structure (which is essential here – any variation will cause this to break) and if you want to download a copy (in IDML format) via this link.

Mis en Place

Although mis en place is a culinary term I’m going to borrow it here – it means ‘everything in place’ (chefs don’t want to go scrabbling around for utensils while they’re preparing food) – and the InDesign equivalent is the workspace. As we’re going to be dealing mainly with typography let’s use a suitable workspace – go to the workspace switcher and choose Typography from the list – it’s probably a good idea to expand the panels by clicking the double-arrows at the top of the panel set, too. Workspace switching isn’t used enough in my opinion – it’s a lightning fast way to access the tools you need without having panels littered all over the place – if you don’t use it already, you really should give it a try.

Creating the Type Styles

We’ll begin by creating paragraph styles for each line, and a character style for the match date – we’ll do that first so that we can use it in one of the paragraph styles. Create a new character style which we will call “Red” and set it up as follows: Font Style: Bold, Character Colour – choose red from the default swatches. Don’t add anything to any of the other fields to make this style as flexible as possible – we’ll let the paragraph styles do the rest of the work.

There are going to be three paragraph styles here (as shown above) and we’re going to create them in the reverse order that they’ll be used, so that we can use Next Style.

Begin by making the style for the match detail – we’ll name it “Detail” and the options I’ve used (you may want to vary these – I’ve kept them very basic and specific to my region) are as follows:

Font: Arial, Regular, 10pt

Language: English UK

Space After: 3mm

I’ve also created a nested style to apply the character style “Red” to the first ‘word’ in that style which takes care of the date. Just in case you’ve never done this before, here’s how:

In the Drop Caps and Nested Styles category, click the New Nested Style button. From the drop-down choose your “Red” character style and if necessary modify the other options in that line to “through” “1″ and “words” as in the image above (click on it to see a larger view if you need to); this will work as there are no spaces in the date so it’s considered as a ‘word’ here. We’ll have to revisit this style at the end of this process but for now you can click OK and then we’ll create the next style for the ‘group’ line – I’ve called mine “Group” and it has the following attributes:

Next Style: Detail

Font: Arial, Italic, 12pt

Space After: 2mm

with that style completed we just need to create one more, called “Match”:

Next Style: Group

Font: Arial Black, Regular, 17pt

Space After: 2mm

Finally, we need to go back into the “Detail” style options and set the Next Style there to “Match” – now we’ve created a formatting loop and – again – that’s why a consistent structure is vital, any change to the pattern will cause this to break.

How Next Style Works

Next Style is a really powerful little feature – what it does is when you reach the end of a paragraph as you type, it automatically switches to the next style. Combining that with Quick Apply to get to the top of the ‘style tree’ means that you can format type incredibly quickly – one of my two minute tip podcasts covers it and you can watch that here. So how is it going to help us with that list if it’s meant to work when you’re typing? The answer is by putting it into an Object Style.

Creating the Object Style

In the Control Strip locate the Object Style button and drop-down. Click on the button and select New Object Style – we’ll call it “worldCup”.

Although it won’t hurt to leave them on, I’m going to set most of the Basic Attributes categories here to Ignore (shown by a small line in the checkboxes) with the exception of the Paragraph Styles – you can do this by alt-clicking on the Paragraph Styles check box twice (once turns all the attributes on, the second turns the others off). Now click on the category to access its detail area and then set the Paragraph Style to “Match” – enable the Apply Next Style checkbox and you’re done – it’s ready to use!

Click on the text frame containing the unstyled list and then either by using Quick Apply or the Object Styles drop-down, choose worldCup and – as if by magic – your list is completely styled. There are so many ways to use this feature – I use it on call-out boxes all the time and the only thing is that they must adhere to a rigid repeating structure (think of what we’ve done here: Match – Group – Detail – Match – Group – Detail… ).

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Well, here we are at the end of this InDesign Fortnight feature – I hope you’ve gained some useful stuff over the last two weeks and if you’d like to see something like this again, let me know!

We’re going to finish up with libraries, and this video should give you a good start – I hope you enjoy it.

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1. Use cmd-6 (ctrl-6 on Windows) to shift ‘focus’ to the first available input field on the control strip – want that in English? Thought so – try this: select an object on your layout, hit cmd-6 and you’ll notice that the x field becomes highlighted so you can simply type a new value there. Select some text with the type tool – hit cmd-6 and the font field becomes highlighted (if you’ve got the character options available, otherwise you’ll get the left indent field). Tab to move between boxes or shift-tab to move backwards – give it a go, you’ll see that even some of the icons respond to the keyboard!
2. To exit the type tool and go immediately to the selection tool, just hit escape (esc) on your keyboard – short and sweet, that’s it – but a real time saver.
3. Use the eyedropper to quickly apply paragraph styles: click on a styled paragraph to ‘load’ the cursor, and then click to apply on other paragraphs. To resample if you need to, hold down the ‘alt’ key. To modify what the tool samples double-click the tool in the toolbox.
4. To add a vertical and horizontal ruler guide at the same time – hold down the cmd key (ctrl 0n Windows) and drag from the ruler intersection (see picture below) – bam! – Two for One!
5. Use the ‘Jump to Page’ shortcut – cmd-J (ctrl-J on Windows) to navigate your document quickly. If you’re on page 1, and you want to go to page 7, do cmd-J, hit 7, hit return – you’re there. Want to go to a master page? Simply type the master page prefix – so, if I’m on page 7 and I want to go to my A-Master, cmd-J, type A, hit return and I’m there – when I’m ready to go back to page 7, cmd-J, hit 7, hit return.

Ruler Intersection Point

[SS55]

Begin by selecting the line tool – the quick key for this is the backslash \ and then click at the top left-hand corner of your document. In the Line Tool dialog enter a length that is about 120% of your document width – in the example I’ve shown here my document is 800 pixels wide so my line length is 960px – and set the angle to 30º.

Switch to the Selection Tool by tapping V on your keyboard and alt-drag a copy of your line down as far as you want the grid size to be, then use CMD-D to repeat the last operation; continue using the shortcut until your page is covered.

Select all (CMD-A) then select the reflect tool by pressing O on the keyboard, and alt-click the light-blue registration mark on the centre of the page, or double-click on the tool in the toolbox. Set the options to Vertical and the angle field should say 90º then click Copy.

You can now convert the lines to guides straight away with CMD-5, or clean it up a little first and there are various ways you can do so – I prefer to draw a line along the top of the document, then choose object > path > divide objects below and delete the bits I don’t want; rinse and repeat with the side and the bottom.

Here’s a simple technique to create a Celtic knotwork style strip, using a line, the zig-zag effect, the Live Paint tools and finishing up creating a pattern brush.

Creating the Knotwork

Begin by creating a short horizontal line with the line tool and then leaving that selected, choose Effects > Distort & Transform > Zig Zag.

In the dialog, choose a fairly large size (I’ve gone for 38, but this will depend on the length of your line), with 2 ridges per segment and smooth points, as shown.

increase the stroke weight so the line gets nice and chunky, then choose Object > Expand Appearance followed by Object > Expand.

You should be left with a filled shape as shown above.

Next, select the Reflect Tool and double-click on it in the toolbox – set the options to vertical, 90º and click copy. Select both shapes and then choose Object > Live Paint > Make.

Now you’ll need the live paint bucket – the quick key for it is K – and to make sure that it’s set up for what we’ll need to do next, double-click it in the toolbox. Make sure that both paint fills and paint strokes are checked.

Select a white fill colour, and drag across the areas that are currently black – be careful to avoid the ‘holes’ as they will fill as well.

Set up your stroke in the control strip – choose black for the colour, set a heavier line weight and make sure that the end-cap is set to butt-cap as shown.

When you approach the line segments on your shape with the paint bucket tool, you should see the cursor change from a bucket to a brush. Click on the line segments as shown, so that you get the characteristic  cross-over from Celtic knotwork patterns.

Create a Pattern Brush

There’s still a bit of work to be done to turn this into a pattern we can use on straight lines – we need to firstly get rid of the lines at the ends – select the scissors tool (C) and click on the end vectors, as illustrated above.

After that, clean up by using the LIve Paint Selection Tool (SHIFT-L) to select the end pieces then delete them. The result can now be expanded (Object > Expand).

Keeping the artwork selected, go to the Brushes panel, click on its panel menu and selecy New Brush. In the dialog, choose Pattern Brush. You should see that the first option contains a copy of your graphic (shown above). All you need to do now is draw some straight lines, then apply your new brush stroke to them.

1. Draw multiple instances of a shape by holding down the tilde (~) key as you draw. Can be really cool for creating interesting patterns and spirograph style shapes.
2. Find yourself reselecting the same things? Save a selection! If you’ve got something selected and it’s taken you more than a minute or so to get it, then you won’t want to be doing it again, will you? Go to Select > Save Selection.
3. In a related topic, did you know you can also save views of your document? Once you’ve got your view set up, go to View > New View – done!
4. Don’t forget that most of your dialog boxes can handle simple math – if you want to draw a rectangle that’s a third of 196 mm (random sample from my head) for example, just enter 196/3 in the width field of the rectangle dialog and you won’t have to go reaching into your desk drawer to rescue the blu-tack covered calculator from the back.
5. To copy an artboard complete with it’s contents, select the artboard tool (SHIFT-O) make sure that move/copy artwork with artboard is enabled (pictured below) and alt-drag the artboard you want to copy.

http://www.adobe.com/products/indesign/customers/

Thanks for all the positive feedback about Illustrator Week – I’m really glad that so many of you are getting something from it and enjoying it.

Next week will be another InDesign tip and coming up soon: Dreamweaver Day!

Stay Tuned.

As usual, Windows users should substitute CMD with CTRL and if you’re on a US Mac keyboard substitute the ALT with OPTION.

Making the components

Use the pencil tool to draw a simple bumpy line, as I have done above.

Use the shortcut CMD-ALT-J to invoke the average command – it is under the Object > Path submenu. Select the horizontal radio button and click ok.

You should end up with something that looks like the above. Leave that selected and double-click on the reflect tool in the toolbox.

Once again, select the horizontal option; click copy.

Switch to the Direct Selection Tool (A) and drag a selection marquee over the last endpoint of the top and bottom lines to select them both.

Once again, use the average command – this time choosing the both option – and then join the two points together by using the Join command – CMD-J (this is also available from the Object > Path menu). Repeat this at the other end of the lines to create a closed shape.

Go to the brushes panel and click on the new brush icon at the bottom. Choose art brush from the dialog and just click ok in the options dialog. If you want, you can repeat these steps a couple more times to create a couple of other brushes to use as well – this technique works best when there’s more than one and the image below shows my brushes panel for this exercise with three new brushes created.

Creating the Appearance

Now you can draw a rectangle with no fill and apply the brush stroke to it by clicking on the stroke in the brushes panel.

If you created more than one new brush, go to the Appearance panel, choose Add New Stroke from the panel menu and apply another (different) brush stroke to your shape.

Repeat as necessary – my shape ended up with the three brushes I’d created added to it, as pictured above. Keep it selected.

Defining and applying the Style

Switch to the Graphic Styles panel and either click the new icon at the bottom of the panel or choose New Graphic Style from the panel menu. All of the attributes of your rectangle now become a style.

All that’s left to do now is to click on a bit of text (or indeed any other object) then select your graphic style from the panel, and you’re done!

Here’s a really quick tip, but as you know I think it’s worth it even saving you a few seconds…

Using layers makes sense in organising your content – but isn’t it a drag (pun intended) if you want to add a layer beneath your current layer? It doesn’t have to be – simply hold down the command key (ctrl on windows) when you click the new layer icon and the layer will be added beneath the current one.

The Workaround

1. Begin by removing the list formatting, if any, then copy the list to the clipboard.
2. Open a new file in a text editor – Notepad on the pc and TextEdit on the Mac (if you’re using the latter and you can se a formatting bar at the top of your document, switch to plain text mode using shift-cmd-T before you paste). Paste in your list, then save the file as a .csv file; quit the text editor.
3. Back in Dreamweaver, it might be a good idea to create a new blank document just to process the list – especially if you have tables in your main document (you’l see why in a minute) – you can then paste the result back into your main document.
4. Go to Insert > Table Objects > Import Tabular Data or File > Import > Tabular Data (you choose – you’ll end up at the same place).
5. Choose the file you just created as the data file and everything else can be left as it is – click OK.
6. Dreamweaver will place a table on the page. It’s quite possible that you’ll get a lot of empt cells – but we can deal with all of that in a second.
7. Select the table using the tag selector and then invoke the Find & Replace dialog with CMD-F (CTRL-F on windows).
8. With the find in drop-down set to Selected Text and the search drop-down set to source code, type &nbsp; into the find field; leave the replace field empty and click replace all.
9. Again, select the table using the tag selector and invoke the find & replace dialog again. This time, set the find in drop-down to current document and the search drop-down to Specific Tag; in the field that appears, type or select the table tag.
10. Remove any line below that using the minus button that you’ll see there.
11. Set the Action drop-down to strip tag and click replace all. The table tags will be removed in the document and the dialog should hang around which is handy as we’ll need it again straight away.
12. Set the specific tag to tr and leave the action menu as it is (strip tag)  – click replace all.
13. The remaining text should be wrapped in td tags and you can deal with these in find & replace too, by searching for that tag and setting the action to replace tag and typing p in the field there.
14. The only thing you may be left with are some empty paragraph tags – <p></p> – and they can be cleaned up in a snap by choosing Commands > Clean up XHTML – the default options there should do it.

There you have it – it isn’t pretty, but it does get the job done, and without using Excel, Numbers or anything other than your good old plain text editor (well, and DW of course).

Creative Suite Bonus

If you have the Creative Suite, an even quicker way is to copy the list, place it into an InDesign document, run the sort list by paragraphs script (don’t know about that? – then this podcast will enlighten you) and then paste it back into Dreamweaver – really fast!

Continuing with my series of InDesign tips every two weeks, here’s a quick tip to help those of you working with threaded text. As always, Windows users need to substitute the CMD key with CTRL and if you’re on a U.S. Mac keyboard, substitute Alt with Option.

Navigating Threaded Text Frames

If you work on publications, then you probably have stories that begin on one page, and then continue on other pages elsewhere – sometimes separated by several pages. With the Selection Tool, if you click on one of the text frames, you can navigate through threaded text frames by using CMD-ALT-PAGEDOWN and CMD-ALT-PAGEUP. Using the same shortcut when you’re working with the Type Tool will select the contents of the next frame in the thread. You can jump to the first or last frame in a threaded story by adding the SHIFT key into the mix.

Don’t have a pagedown key (I’m typing this from my Macbook Pro which doesn’t have such a key) then you’ll need to use the Fn key and the DOWN/UP arrows (so Fn-CMD-ALT-DOWN for example).

It even removes the colour if you backspace – try typing “Go” and then backspacing the “o”.