InDesign CS5 is Here!
Here's Ten Reasons (and then some)
Why I'm Upgrading.

Different Sized Pages in One Document. No Plugins Needed!

If you've ever designed stationery with letterhead, envelopes and business cards, you'll know what a hassle it can be to create three different files. But what if you could work on all three in one file and when done, export it to PDF and sent it off to the client or printer?

Or maybe you've had to create a gatefold in a magazine that needs a different size page to fold out.

The days of workarounds for these types of jobs is now over. InDesign CS5 now has the capability to use different page sizes all within one document. The secret is in the new pages tool:

In addition to sizing pages, the pages tool can also be used to position pages.

Illustrator-Like Panel Manages All Objects

In CS5, InDesign's layers panel gets a complete make over. Like the links panel in CS4, a great deal of new functionality has been added to this panel.

For Illustrator users, this will look quite familiar. The user can now control individual objects in the layers panel. Objects can be locked or named individually and visibility can be turned on and off. Individual objects can be selected by opt/alt clicking the object in the layers panel.

 

Resize, Move and Scale Objects While Maintaining Spacing

Consider this. You've created a rough layout and you like the amount of space you've left between objects. But you're not quite sure it looks all that great. You want to experiment so you start moving things around and resizing frames to make it look just right.

But what if you had a tool that would do all the work for you by just clicking and dragging. InDesign lovers, introducing the gap tool! In short, this handy tool allows you to adjust the layout by adjusting the space between objects by focusing on the whitespace instead of the objects.

And with the new Auto-Fit option, the content in a graphic frame will be scaled along with the frame. This tool works with multiple objects and by combining the tool with modifier keys (opt/cmd, alt/ctrl)allows the user to increase or decrease the gap while keeping the objects static, as well as moving the objects instead of resizing them

This one is going to save a lot of time for users laying out pages.

An Editorial Favorite Makes Its Way to InDesign

Anyone whose ever used a word processor knows that one of the very basic features is the ability to track changes in your document and then go back and accept or reject them. This feature makes editorial changes much easier.

Many users are unaware of this, but InDesign has had the capability to track changes for a long time. Unfortunately, there's been no way to view, accept or reject those changes in the interface without opening the file in InCopy, or to spend money on third party plugins.

That ends with InDesign CS5. Open the Track Changes panel and enable the feature. Changes can be tracked on a story by story basis and by user with the time a date stamp shown for each change. Just as with InCopy, changes are not shown in the layout, only in the story editor.

Now Get Complete Control of Corner Effects

Up until now it was all or nothing at all when it came to corner effects in InDesign. With CS5, the capability of creating corner effects has been vastly expanded to allow for corners to be styled individually or together.

Every frame has a small yellow yellow icon attached to it in the upper right corner which when clicked allows the user to edit the corners:

Click the icon and all corners have a handle to drag or click. Drag it to set the size of the effect or alt/opt click to change the shape of the effect. Holding down the shift key allows the user to change just the one corner.

Of course if you prefer a dialog box, that's available, too:

No More Waiting to Get Back to Work

We've all watched the progress bar in past versions of InDesign when printing or exporting large documents. Either that or gone to get a cup of coffee.

InDesign CS5 now handles these tasks in the background, letting the user get right back to work..

Print or export a document to PDF and you can get right back to work while the print or export takes place in the background. You can always watch the progress in the Background Tasks panel, but it's no more exciting than watching the progress bar now.

Content Indicator

In the past transforming the contents of frame required that user switch tools to the direct selection tool. In CS5 that becomes unnecessary.

Just mouse over any graphic and the content indicator will appear in the center of the frame. Just click on that and you've got full control over the contents including scaling, moving and rotating within the frame.

And speaking of rotating, users no longer need to switch to a rotate tool. By mousing over a corner of any object, the rotate icon will appear allowing the user the click and rotate the object.

Tool Tips on Demand

I readily admit that most top ten's won't include this one, but as someone who finds it difficult to remember every modifier for every tool, I love it.

Enable this panel and whenever a tool is chosen all of the possible uses and modifiers are displayed. This one will be very valuable to InDesign newbies.

Span Text Across Columns

Magazine and newsletter designers have long faced the dilemma about what to do with multi column layouts with headlines that need to be spread across the columns.

The workarounds have traditionally been to use a single cell table but that only works at the top of frame or the long standing method of using separate frames. With CS5 the user can select a paragraph and set it to span all columns in a multi-column frame or an set number of them. The screenshot below shows the result:

Split Text Within Columns

Then there's opposite issue where for one reason or another you'd like to have a multi column paragraph in the middle of a running single column story.

In much the same way as above, the user can very easily choose to have a paragraph split into multiple columns. In the below shot you can see several different mult-column paragraphs in one single column frame:

Balance Columns

A long running feature request, the ability to balance columns with one click has finally arrived. Open the text frame properties dialog box and choose balance columns. Just like that your multi column frame will contain nicely balanced columns.

As an added bonus, because this doesn't rely on scripts, even if you edit the text or resize the frame, the columns will continue to be balanced.

Vertical Justification in Non-Rectangular Frames

One of the big headaches in past versions of InDesign was the inability to use vertical justification if the frame wasn't rectangular. The only workaround was to set the frame's inset to a number large enough to give you a rectangle. That was fine unless you had a text wrap in which case it was nearly impossible to automate.

That limitation is now history.

New Panels, Tools, and Capabilities

InDesign CS4 added very primitive features to export to SWF but it was clearly a "1.0" feature laying the foundation for what was to come. With CS5, InDesign can now create full featured SWF files suitable for use on the web or for presentations.

With the new animation panel, you can choose animation and motion paths, including importing presets created in Flash Professional or by other InDesign users.. Also controllable is opacity and the direction of the path.

The timing panel is used to set the order of animations and you can even choose to group objects together so they can animate at the same time.

Finally, once you've got it all put together, you can check your animation right in the application using the new preview panel. The panel allows you to check selected object, selected pages or spreads or even by page. No need to export to check it in a browser.

Finally, a preloader has been included. This will make the viewer aware that a file is loading if the SWF is large and/or the connection is slow.

While the above are my personal top ten, there are a lot of other new features and enhancements. Here 's brief rundown:

New Default Font

Minion Pro Regular is new default font on both Mac and Windows.

Auto-Fit Content

As mentioned in the Gap Tool description, users can now set the fitting for a frame and maintain that choice even after changing the size of the frame.

Presentation View

Do you like the full screen previews in Acrobat? If so, you're going to like this, too.

Gridified Tools

In CS4 a user can create a grid of object by utilizing the file>place command or dragging in multiple objects from Bridge, the desktop, finder or Windows Explorer. CS5 takes this another step and gives the user the ability to create grids while using any of the frame creation tools.

Super Step and Repeat

Currently, selecting an object and using alt/opt+drag allows the user to create a duplicate of that object. In CS5 once you start to alt/opt+drag you release the alt/opt key and use the arrow keys to create multiple copies equally spaced.

Mini Bridge

As the name implies, this is a mini version of Adobe Bridge. If you like the compact mode of Bridge, you'll love this.

Page Thumbnails

Currently, InDesign only saves a thumbnail of the first page of the document which is displayed in Bridge. A new preference allows the user to save 1, 2, 5, 10 or all pages as thumbnails which will be viewable in Bridge.

Show Linked Files in Bridge

InDesign CS5 has a new method of embedding metadata about linked files. Using that info allows the user to view those links as thumbnails in Bridge and find their location without opening InDesign.

Pixel Measurements

CS5 now has the ability to create documents using pixels as the dimensions. Comes in handy when using InDesign for SWF creation.

Improved Export to XHTML

Earlier versions of InDesign exported styles to empty CSS declarations. CS5 makes an attempt to create CSS styles based on the InDesign styles.

Interactive PDF Improvements

Set the initial view of PDFs as well as the timing for automatic page advancements without opening them first in Acrobat.

Convert URLs to Hyperlinks

Using a new command from the Hyperlinks Panel menu, the user can search the document for URLs and have InDesign automatically convert them to hyperlinks. As an added bonus, those hyperlinks can be assigned a character style.

Edit Original for Multiple Links

In the past InDesign limited the ability to use the edit original command to just one linked file at a time. CS5 allows the user to select as many as he/she desires.

Loaded Cursor for Single Images

The loaded curser was added back in CS3 to preview images before placing them. But it only worked with multiple images. CS5 completes this feature by adding it to single images.

"Sticky" Preview Setting

Enable or disable preview in any dialog that allow is and InDesign will remember your choice.

InCopy Enhancements

The text styling improvements in InDesign are also present in InCopy. Additionally, Incopy users can now use an eyedropper tool just like the one in InDesign to copy and apply text attributes.