InDesign Publish Online Test

Test of the InDesign Publish Online Web Embed Code

For years I have been making yearbooks for one of the Puget Sound Region’s top volleyball clubs. When I had access to Adobe DPS, I made interactive apps that were reminiscent of the printed version, but were fully interactive. Adobe has removed the DPS option for those of us with personal Adobe CC accounts, so this year I thought I’d try some other options. I uploaded one version of the book to iBooks (that version has the ads removed), and I’ve also created an online version with the InDesign CC Publish Online (Preview).

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Paragraph Shading Is a Long-Awaited New InDesign Feature

Paragraph Shading is the cool new feature in InDesign CC 2015 and I’m loving it.

Paragraph shading can call attention to pull quotes or sidebars, create interesting running heads, or make introductory text stand out. Paragraph shading is important. And until now, it has always been a challenge.

If you’ve never had to shade a paragraph or haven’t used rules to create reversed heads in long documents, then you can’t imagine how big a deal Paragraph Shading really is.

Long documents often use shaded paragraphs to call attention to text. They can be used for callouts, pull quotes, or sidebars. They can be used to stripe tabbed text, to create interesting running heads, to make introductory text stand out. Shaded paragraphs add to readability and utility. Long runs of tabbed text without shading can be very difficult to read. Have you ever watched someone take out a ruler to follow along when reading tables? That’s one sign of poorly formatted text. Paragraph shading is important. And until now, it has always been a challenge.
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Finessing Files in InDesign: Adding GREP No Break to Paragraph Style

Widows, Orphans, and Runts, Oh My!

It has been my experience that nothing (except maybe bad kerning or poor font choice) makes an art director grab for a red pen like finding paragraph runts in text. A runt is a very short word or phrase that sits by itself in the last line of a paragraph. In previous posts we discussed the benefits of using a Nonbreaking Space and a No Break Character Style to help finesse your text flow.

But wouldn’t it be grand if you could actually prevent most bad breaks from occurring at all?

While these tools make it easier to control how your text flows, they will not save much proofing time on your part because you will still have to read the text to spot bad breaks and then manually apply these options to correct them. Wouldn’t it be grand if you could actually prevent most bad breaks from occurring at all? You can! With the power of GREP.

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Finessing Files in InDesign: No Break

Give Me a Break–Not!

This paragraph contains a runt (single word) on the last line.

In the last Finessing Files-related post, I discussed uses of the Nonbreaking Space. It is a quick and easy way to prevent text from breaking at awkward spaces. But InDesign also provides a No Break option that unites the words you have highlighted and does not allow them to break at the end of a line. You can access it in a number of ways. The illustrated paragraph contains a single word on the last line. As a production artist, you could let it be, or you could spare your art director from having heart palpitations by correcting it at this stage.

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Finessing Files in InDesign: Nonbreaking Space

Sometimes You Need a Break; Sometimes You Don’t

Spaces are often taken for granted. They are thought of simply as the delimiter of words in a sentence. But spaces are powerful. For instance, the days of putting two spaces between sentences are long gone, but the need for that space equivalent is still here. In fact, there are now more types of spaces available than most people have ever thought of: em spaces, en spaces, thin spaces, figure spaces, and more. Today I am contemplating the nonbreaking space.

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