Publicious Links: The Whine Flu Edition

I don’t have a cure for the H1N1 virus, but good links are good medicine for whatever ails ya. Unless you’re ailed by attention deficit disorder. In which case, they’re poison. Anyhoo…

Thus far, I’ve been able to avoid the Swine flu, but I think I’m coming down with a case of the Whine flu. Symptoms: dissatisfaction with my software and hardware. Not fast enough. Not up-to-date enough. Buggy. Case in point: Adobe’s back with another warning about the security of Javascript in Acrobat. Some folks are so fed up, they’re dumping Reader for alternative PDF software. Sheesh. Adobe invented PDF. “How embarassking,” as Popeye would say. The new patch is promised by May 12th. Till then, I guess, just rub your screen with Purell, and disable Javascript in Acrobat.

Not to kick a giant corporation while they’re down, but there is more bad news in Adobeland. Not only did they have shutdown weeks where all employees were forced to stay home, layoffs, wage freezes, and now financial analysts downgraded Adobe stock from “buy” to “hold,” even though it’s stumbling between $15–$25 lately. The thinking is that Adobe’s stock will stay low till Creative Suite 5 appears. Let’s hope CS5 is a home run. But of course, if you read Publicious, you already know what’s in store for CS5 😉 If you don’t want to take my word for it, check out the  interview with CEO Shantanu Narayen. I’m sure he mentions Publicious in there somewhere…

Actually, he’s more focused on Flash, making deals with Netflix, Comcast, and Disney to deliver content in Flash to your TV. The question is, do you want Flash on your TVs? Personally, I don’t. TV’s craptacular enough as it is, without having to install the latest plug-in version and reboot the set before you can watch MythBusters. Or commercial pop-up ads. Or the prospect of having the SuperBowl “Unexpectedly Quit” while a team is driving for a touchdown. When it happens (and you know it will), it’ll be a 21st Century Heidi moment.

Want to know who else is reading Publicious? Check out Quantcast.com for a look at yourselves. It’s fun to see where everyone is coming from. I’d like to give a shout out to my 10 unique cookies in Bulgaria. Yo! S’up, Razgrad?

Trying to enhance your software developer skillz? By all meanz, check out Refcardz.com for free PDF “cheat sheetz” chock full o’ information and well-dezigned.

Also worth checking out are Adobe’s new “marketplaces.” Claiming to be “the ultimate resource” and “the most comprehensive collection products, services, and communities available.” Sounds like Exchange on steroids. So far there are two marketplaces, Photoshop and AIR. If they succeed, there will no doubt be more.

I’ll give you three guesses who just bought Stanza, the eBook reader app for the iPhone, and the first two don’t count. If you said Amazon, you win (or do you?) Hmmm.

By the way, Amazon just announced a large format Kindle, aimed at the textbook market. My heart’s still with the underdog, PlasticLogic guys. But either way, if my son’s backpack can get under 20 lbs, I’m good.

Looking for a perfect Mother’s Day gift? Sure, Facebook was ruined when your mom joined, but at least you have Twitter, right? Well, before mom starts following Ashton Kutcher and tweeting links to your prom photos, you might be proactive and give her the new Twitter book from O’Reilly. Who knows, maybe she’ll become a niche titan and buy you a shiny new MacBook Pro.

Finally, I leave you with the disturbing images of the real origin of swine flu: Johnny Cash singing with Miss Piggy.

Be good, and remember, cough into your elbow to keep your PDFs virus-free.

Publicious Links: The Hoist The Jolly Roger Edition

Y’arr, mateys. Your captain has sworn off rum in favor of GoogleJuice, so this week’s meme be pirates. Has anybody seen a stray parrot, answers to the name of “Preflight”?

By the way, according to the bean counters, InDesign CS4’s Live Preflight is worth more than a chest of Spanish doubloons. Well, OK, about $5 a week. Check out the Pfeiffer Report on CS4 ROI for details (Adobe ID required for download).

Next, read my 5 Random Tips at InDesign Secrets or I’ll have ye swab the deck.

Prepare the boarding party, part 1: More speculation on Apple buying Adobe.

Prepare the boarding party, part 2:  More speculation on Google buying Twitter.

Jack Sparrow just threw a squid at you on Facebook. Captain Hook’s posted a YouTube clip. Blackbeard’s tweeting up a typhoon. How do you get a handle on all the pirates in your life? Try an RIA that gathers all your social networks into one place, like Skimmer.

Flex Marks the Spot: Here’s a nice (and thorough) look at best and worst practices in developing a rich internet application: Architecture of RIA.

If your skull and crossbones is looking a little tattered, design a new emblem to strike fear into all who cross your path. psd tuts+ has an eye-popping tutorial on creating a Hellacious Flaming Skull in Photoshop.

Speaking of Photoshop, John Nack has announced that PICT is about to walk the plank. Wonder what InDesign and Illustrator features we can safely send to Davy Jones’ locker…

Till next week, I wish smooth sailing to you. And remember, dead men click no links.

Pub Links: The Play Ball Edition

Ah, springtime in Boston. The last remnants of dirty snow cower in the shadows near big box parking lots. The Emerson girls are trading in their UGGs for flip-flops. And with the first pitch at Fenway, the looooooooooooooooooong winter of ’08–’09 was finally, officially, over ’round these parts. Now ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, introducing the starting lineup for the 2009 Publicious GREP Sox.

Batting leadoff, and playing centerfield, O’ReillyMaker lets you customize your own version of those iconicly weirdo book covers.

Batting second, and playing shortstop, a must-have iPhone app for fontgeeks: Bitstream’s What the Font? for iPhone. With it, you can go to the grocery store, snap a pic of a box of Cocoa Puffs, and WTF will tell you what typeface that crazy rooster has been dancing in front of lo these many years. I think it’s HelveticaBlackExtraCuckoo.

Batting third and playing second base, Squidspot’s Periodic Table of Typefaces.

Batting fourth and playing first base, David Pogue’s blog post on landscape vs. portrait orientation for PDFs. Touches on a lot of issues of readability and design.

Batting fifth, the designated hitter, the story of how the InDesign spell checker caused a controversy that lead to a newspaper recall. Actually, I think it was probably the person using the spell checker. But fine, throw ID under the bus. It can take it.

Batting sixth and playing left field, Apple and Adobe: The Odd Couple. Steve Jobs has to be Felix. Who at Adobe would be Oscar?

Batting seventh and playing right field, the Cut & Paste Digital Design Tournament in Chicago.

Batting eighth and playing third base, Adobe and Facebook getting social.

Batting ninth and catching, an anagram maker. Some of my faves:

Helvetica = A tech evil

Adobe InDesign = bondage inside, deadening bios, disdain begone

Publicious.net = bionic pustule, polite incubus, unlit poi cubes.

And the starting pitcher, THE greatest Looney Tune of all time: Baseball Bugs.

Guided by the Light (Blue, Magenta, or even Gray)

Guides are a wonderful thing. If you’ve ever drawn a guide on your layout so you can lock frames to that guide, you’ll know how nice it is to just click, drag, let go and get perfectly aligned rows of frames. But sometimes you don’t want dozens of guides drawn all over your page.

If you haven’t used the Margins and Columns panel under the Layout menu, I suggest you check it out. It’s a fantastic way to create guide lines on your layout without having anything that can be accidentally dragged or moved.  The margin guides can be hidden, are visible in InCopy, and make it a great way to show that you’ve got your art and text in the live area of your file. Whether you are creating a book where you need to make sure that there is the correct amount of white space in the gutter to keep things from getting cut off in the binding, or whether you’re creating a postcard and want to make sure you don’t have text too close to the trim so you don’t risk losing something that is very important in the final image. And if you’re often dragging around frames, if you keep your Snap to Guides selected, your boxes will lock to the margin guides and you’ll have less work to perform to get items to align.

If you have a non-facing pages document, your Margins and Columns guide will look like this:

If you have a facing pages document, your Margins and Columns guide will look like this:

And that’s great. Having a guide on the page to always let you know if you’re within your safe printing or binding area is wonderful. But there is more that you can do with unselectable guides.

In that same window there are column guides you can set, too.  Imagine a newspaper front page. There are likely very even columns of text with white space between them and occasionally image boxes that align on those columns.  But what if your layout calls for you to have one really wide column and one skinny column? Well, if you choose 3 columns and adjust the gutter (which is the white space between columns) then you just can create one text area that runs across two columns and one text frame that runs across one. In this example the light blue box is your main text column and the light pink box is your secondary text column.

The Document Setup window also has settings that will apply permanent guides. If you’ve got documents that need to have a set bleed per your printer’s requests, you can set that as well in the Document Setup window. Click on More Options and you can enter in the amount of your bleed and a colored guide line will appear outside your document edge. If you enter a slug area in that same window you’ll get another colored line appearing outside your document edge. The slug area is a great place to put information that you may want to be able to include in a printout or a PDF, but that you would also want to exclude from a printout or PDF.  (When you print, you can choose to have your bleeds or your slug area included in the printout or PDF.

The nice thing about all these guide lines is that you can determine what color they appear in your document. And you can align those colors with the colors of your layers. Say your slug guide lines are light blue. You can create a layer called slug, make sure it is colored light blue, and then you can add whatever info to a text frame that you might find helpful. This makes the slug guidelines and your text frame the same color so they’re easy to visually relate to each other.

And because InDesign is almost as flexible as a performer for Cirque de Soleil you can either create all of these items when you create a new document:

You can have different margins on each spread, or even each page.

If you know you’re going to have just a few different types of shell files with guides, swatches, layers, even styles then you can create a file that has all the info in it you want all of your documents to have, save it as a template (it will have .indt in the name). Then when you want to create a new file choose File/New/Document from Template. Open your desired file and you’re ready to go and you’ll know that all of your preferences are set. In fact, if you choose that option now you’ll be taken to Bridge where you can see all the different templates that InDesign comes loaded with. Might be worth poking around to see if there is anything that will help you out.

Lunchtime Links: The Bailout Bonus Edition

Now that the corporate malfeasance has been dealt with by a powerful surge of re-branding, AIG can go back to standing for “anchored inline graphic.” Whew! For a minute there I was worried we were all screwed. At least now the printers will be happy with all the millions spent on new business cards, stationery, signs, etc.

I just posted a way of using GREP styles with Preview in InDesign to play and learn GREP with fewer tears and gnashing of teeth.

A few other popular GREP reources:

Master Yoda was actually speaking of GREP when he famoulsy croaked, “Do. Or do not. There is no try.” He also said of Peter Kahrel’s GREP in InDesign CS3, “A better $10, you will not spend, my young apprentice.”

BBEdit’s GREP tutorial

JetSet Communications Adventures in GREP.

The InDesiger’s Undocumented Bit of GREP Gold.

GREP-free links

This summer Montreal will play host to the XML alpha geek community when the Balisage 2009, conference hits town. Montreal, summer, XML, oui, oui, oui! Anyone interested in being a speaker must submit a paper by April 24th. Ahem, Mr. Damitz, I’m looking at you…

Counting human beans: maybe the AIG bonuses wouldn’t have happened if the execs’ performance had been subjected to this kind of scrutiny.

If you like your graphic design preserved with a good dose of sodium benzoate, check out the magnificent decontrstuction of Pepsi’s new look. at Before&After.

NCAA, meet PDF: in Adobe’s Ultimate Tourney Guide. (Acrobat 9′er required). You only have to pay for it if your picks all lose. Call it a virtual vig. 😉

Lastly: Sherman, set the Wayback Machine for exactly five years ago. When Adobe was touting the new CS as the most important box of software you’d see for the next five years. Guess they didn’t see the fact that in five years, there wouldn’t BE any software in boxes. They were clearly living in the past. If the cloud people have their way, in five years, there won’t be any software on my computer.

See ya, kids. I’m off to collect my bailout bonus: a bowl of Ramen.

X-Treme Rogue Spots: Issue 1

Sometimes when I’m creating templates I feel like an X-Men style mutant. Able to see things others don’t see or care about. Finding latent threats hidden in plain view. Finding myself enthralled with a single-dimensional world where colors are brighter than the real world. (Hey, it’s been pretty gray in Chicago lately.)

And one of the things that I find myself running into pretty frequently, especially with files that have been saved up from a previous version of InDesign, is something I like to call rogue swatches. (Now do you get the X-Men reference?)

Anyway, I opened a file recently to turn it into a template. There were several pieces of art that had been linked but that I wasn’t given. I knew that these art pieces were going to be placed in the final document by someone else and I didn’t need the art to create a template. And I knew that my document was going to be printed in 1-color. And that color was the very acceptable, but very boring Black.

However I couldn’t find the unwanted Pantone spot swatch in my document and went through every paragraph style and character style trying to find where it was used. I didn’t have the linked art to see which piece of art might be bringing the swatch into my palette so I decided to delete everything to try to find it. I deleted all the art frames, all the paragraph styles, all the character styles, all the object styles, all the table and cell styles. I ended up with a document that only had guides in it, and that blasted swatch.

The designer confirmed that there should be no spot colors in the final document. So I began looking for other methods of deletion. Based on several websites (none of which had the cognitive abilities of Professor Xavier) I created a set of steps that seem to work most of the time.

Step 1
Choose “Select All Unused” in the Swatches palette. You should be able to “Delete Swatch” by clicking the trash can icon. If it is greyed out like the screenshot above, then move on to the next step.

Step 2
Export your document as an Interchange Document. Open the .inx file you’ll find located on your hard drive. Try to delete the unused swatches again. Not feeling super-powered yet?

Step 3
Create a new InDesign file. Select all of the unused swatches and delete them. Grab your rogue swatch from your original file and drag it to this new document. If any other swatches come through with it (seems to happen for me in CS3), delete them. Create an empty frame and fill it with your rogue swatch. Export this file as a pdf. Place the pdf in your original file. Delete it. Your chances of being able to select the rogue swatch and delete it should be greater now. But still no? Ay yi yi! I know how you feel.

Step 4
Create an empty Illustrator file. Create a new swatch that has the exact same name as the rogue swatch, but the swatch makeup doesn’t matter as long as it does have a color applied. Make sure that it is saved as a spot color if your rogue swatch is spot, and process if your rogue is process. Save this as a .ai file and as a .pdf. Open your original InDesign file, place both elements on your page and delete them one at a time. You should now be able to delete the rogue swatch.

I sincerely hope you can delete the swatch. If you can’t, please, please contact me. I’d love to take your file and see if I can figure it out. Seriously! Cause my super-power? Total geekery.

Lunchtime Links: The Happy Birthday Publicious Edition

Happy Birthday, Publicious!

One year ago today, I published my first Publicious post. Here we are 150 posts later! This has been incredibly fun, rewarding, and tiring. In honor of the occasion, all of today’s links are staying “in house.” Sort of a Greatest Hits thing. Without further ado, here are the 10 most popular Publicious posts to date, according to the WordPress stats.

10. Über-Master Pages in which Cinnamon shows she is the Buffy of page layout.

9. Adventures in FontStruction in which I re-create the 8-bit Atari glory of my youth, one pixel at a time.

8. House of a Different Color in which I apply a virtual coat of paint to my in-laws’ house, thereby avoiding the actual job. Gotta love digitizing your chores. Now if I could just apply the Scoop filter to the litterbox…

7. Try to Tri-Fold Correctly in which Cinnamon drops the knowledge of just how tricky it is to make a brochure really right. Almost as cool as being able to fold a t-shirt in 2 seconds. Oops, OK, I’ll let that one external link slide.

6. TLF, My New BFF in which I wax rhapsodic about the possibilities of Adobe’s text tech.

5. Streamlining InDesign Templates in which Cinnamon shows how to build an InDesign document right, from the ground up.

4.  Basically Adaptable Styles in which Cinnamon offers up a sequel to her templating hit.

3. The Road to Hell is Paved With Double Clicks in which I reveal to the world just how far I am willing to go down the rabbit hole in search of that last morsel of geek.

2. Is This What a Kindle Killer Looks Like? in which I think I’m smarter than a company that got 615 million visitors to its website last year.

1. CS5 Revealed! in which I play a Nostradorkus, foretelling of the future of publishing tech in a book that I found at my town recycling center one Saturday. It’s Back to the Future, with mullets and vectors.

Now that’s a spicy meatball. First, a huge thanks to Cinnamon, since four of those top ten posts are hers. If only I could sabotage her sewing machine… Second, there are no posts by Eric on that list, simply because his stuff hasn’t been around long enough to accumulate mad stats yet. However, IMNSHO, Eric’s “Bits and Pieces” series should be required reading for anyone who may have to deal with XML in publishing. Which is, like, everyone, right? So here you go.

The Bits and Pieces I: Making XML

The Bits and Pieces II: Content Model

The Bits and Pieces III: Building Blocks

The Bits and Pieces IV: The Vendors

And what’s a birthday without presents? Here’s a gift for everyone: I’ve found another massively talented person to agree to be a contributor. She’s an amazing digital artist who will bring a whole new area of expertise to Publicious. Who is this person? Stay tuned!

OK, I have to go blow out these candles before the wax drips inside my keyboard.

Cross-Promotional Log-rolling, vol. 3

The new issue of InDesign Magazine is out on virtual newstands throught the cosmos. It sports 14 pages of awesome tips and tricks, info on handing off InDesign content to Flash developers, and a review of InMath by yours truly. So if you ever find yourself having to do this:

Read this. And tell ’em Mike sent ya.

Lunchtime Links

Time to crack open a new package of Ramen and see if I can write this post before the noodles turn mushy. Should I mix the usual chicken-MSG bomb or try the organic roasted dandelion root? Life is made of choices. Only the good die young.

Elvis is a slick-looking digital asset manager with hooks into InDesign, and based on Flex and Adobe AIR.

iStudio Publisher is an intriguing desktop publishing app that lives somewhere in the “far unlit unknown” between the iWork suburbs and the big city lights of InDesignopolis.

RogueSheep posted back in November, A Developer’s View of InDesign CS4. Worth a looksee because they made a Flex panel in InDesign to play a game like Asteroids. In InDesign.

Here’s a YouTube video of a 1981 news report that asks us to “image if you will..turning on your home computer to read the news.” Sorry, news on a computer? That’s just cuh-ray-zeee!

Lastly, if you are a MacHead, you must must must check out the insanely great freeware app, Mactracker. It is one nifty tool, showing specs and info on not only every Macintosh ever, but tons of other Apple products, including software. Here’s how cool it is: for each Mac, there’s a button to play the Startup chime from that exact model. Ahh, my dear departed 512k, I never thought I’d hear your voice again.

A Kind Gesture or Bartender, Pour Me Two Fingers of InDesign

This one’s for the laptop lads and ladies.

Even though I don’t have one of the latest and greatest MacBook pros which offer extended support for gestures in Creative Suite apps, I am still a fan of two-fingered trackpad scrolling. One finger on the trackpad moves your cursor. Two fingers on the trackpad scrolls the window. It’s just how I roll (the screen). It works in pretty much every app I’ve tried, and it’s just so smooth and easy, once you try it, you’ll never scroll any other way. Until they invent retinal-scan scrolling, this is as easy as it gets. Well, yesterday while working in InDesign I accidentally discovered it gets even cooler, and I kicked myself for not discovering the trick sooner. I forgot the Mac Geek’s Rule of Thumb/Index/Ring/Pinkie: if something is cool, add Command, Shift, or Option to make it cooler.

Hold the Command key and pull two fingers toward you to scroll right.

Hold the Command key and push two fingers away from you to scroll left.

Add shift and you jump a whole screen at a time (probably only useful when you’re zoomed in to the viewing level of an electron microscope).

Hold Option and pull two fingers toward you to zoom out.

Hold Option and push two fingers away from you to zoom in.

The left-right scrolling seems to only work in InDesign, but the others work in Illustrator and Photoshop too.

I am not alone in my fandom for these shortcut gestures. Some folks have been trying for years to spread the word, if only I’d been paying attention.