InDesign CS4: Top 10 New Features

Though InDesign CS4 includes strong improve­ments for all users, it’s pri­mar­i­ly focused on ser­vic­ing the pre­vi­ous­ly unad­dressed role of InDesign in Web and ani­mat­ed doc­u­ment pro­duc­tion. I’ve tried to look fair­ly at the new fea­tures for all users, and have come up with my list of favorites. Because of space, numer­ous oth­er fea­tures and enhance­ments could­n’t make the list, but do deserve an hon­or­able men­tion. New fea­tures like the abil­i­ty to instant­ly arrange mul­ti­ple doc­u­ment win­dows on screen in over a dozen dif­fer­ent ways, the fact that Mac users now final­ly have an appli­ca­tion back­ground, and tabbed doc­u­ments come imme­di­ate­ly to mind.

Here’s what did make our list of Top 10 New Features in InDesign CS4. (Paul, can I get a drum roll please?)

Conditional Text: Like InDesign CS3’s Text Variables, Conditional Text is one of those good ideas that most peo­ple won’t use–even if they rec­og­nize that it’s there. In a nut­shell it allows you to set con­di­tions for the dis­play of text–if the con­di­tion is met, text appears; if the con­di­tion isn’t met, the text is hid­den, and the remain­ing text reflows to com­pen­sate for its absence. Adobe is pri­mar­i­ly tout­ing the fea­ture as a means of repur­pos­ing con­tent between print and dig­i­tal (PDF, Flash, and HTML) out­put with­out the need to cre­ate and main­tain mul­ti­ple ver­sions of the same doc­u­ment. Although it’s a good idea, which earns it a spot on this list, I think, even with the oth­er rea­sons to cre­ate digital-distribution doc­u­ments in InDesign, most work­flows will still be bet­ter served by sav­ing mul­ti­ple ver­sions of the doc­u­ment or using lay­ers to dif­fer­en­ti­ate between print and dig­i­tal con­tent, which is why Conditional Text is at the bot­tom of my favorite fea­tures list.

Exporting to Flash CS4 (cropped; click for full image).

Flash Interactivity and Export: A gen­uine sur­prise to most every­one was the suc­cess of Flash con­tent cre­ation in InDesign rival QuarkXPress. Not to be out­done for long with its own tech­nol­o­gy, Adobe has now brought Flash cre­ation into InDesign. InDesign con­tent can be export­ed direct­ly to Flash SWF for imme­di­ate use online or on CD, or it can be export­ed into the new XFL inter­change file for­mat for import and refine­ment in Adobe Flash Professional CS4. Either way, the lay­out is faith­ful­ly pre­served, includ­ing object and text editabil­i­ty (in XFL), hyper­links, inter­ac­tive but­tons, and page tran­si­tions, anoth­er new feature.

Animated Page Transitions: As part of Adobe’s pur­chase of Aldus in 1995 it acquired–and prompt­ly killed–Persuasion, a com­peti­tor to Microsoft PowerPoint geared toward cre­ative pro­fes­sion­als. With its user friend­li­ness, unpar­al­leled cre­ativ­i­ty, and inte­grat­ed export of platform-independent, font-inclusive PDFs that can be shown as slideshows pre­sen­ta­tions on any com­put­er or pro­jec­tor, InDesign has, in recent years, tak­en up the man­tle of pre­sen­ta­tion cre­ator for the cre­ative pro­fes­sion­al. One major fea­ture it lacked com­pared to PowerPoint was page tran­si­tions to keep the audi­ence’s inter­est between slides. They could be added in Acrobat, of course, but each revi­sion to the slideshow there­fore required sep­a­rate edits to the InDesign doc­u­ment and the PDF, which was inef­fi­cient. Now InDesign steps even more ful­ly into Persuasion’s long missed shows with native page tran­si­tions that include wipe, page turn, blinds, comb, fade, dis­solve, and more. Once export­ed to PDF or SWF, the ani­ma­tions cre­ate smooth changeovers from one page or frame to the next. Watch out, PowerPoint!

Cross-References: Cross-referencing with auto­mat­ic update for­mer­ly required third par­ty plug-ins, but now InDesign CS4 does it native­ly. Once a cross-reference is cre­at­ed, InDesign auto­mat­i­cal­ly updates it to reflect reflow and oth­er copy changes. Online doc­u­ments cre­at­ed in InDesign–a big focus of CS4–are also enhanced with hyper­links con­nect­ing cross-references in the same or even exter­nal documents.

The new Preflight pan­el (cropped; click for full image).

Live Preflight: The new Preflight pan­el checks your doc­u­ment as you work. Instead of wait­ing until the last minute, when you’re prob­a­bly already wor­ried about a dead­line, the Preflight pan­el exam­ines the entire doc­u­ment or a range of pages in real-time, as you work. It reports instant­ly such errors as over­set text, stroke weight issues, and the use of low res­o­lu­tion images. Not only does it report prob­lems, it also sug­gests and con­nec­tions you to the means of solv­ing problems.

Live Preflight is a handy, time-saving addi­tion indeed.

Spread Rotation: If you’ve ever used InDesign to lay­out a cal­en­dar, prod­uct pack­ag­ing, or long doc­u­ments that include mul­ti­ple page ori­en­ta­tions you know InDesign leaves you with two unsa­vory choices–work side­ways with some or most page con­tent rotat­ed 90-degrees or split the doc­u­ment up into mul­ti­ple files. (You could also use the Page Control plug-in I cre­at­ed to address this prob­lem and the need for mul­ti­ple page sizes in the same doc­u­ment.) Although InDesign still does­n’t do mul­ti­ple page sizes in the same doc­u­ment (for­tu­nate­ly for me and DTP Tools, the licensee that dis­trib­utes Page Control for me), it can now tem­porar­i­ly rotate the view of spreads in 90-degree increments.

Smart Text Reflow: Finally you won’t have to wor­ry over­ly much about man­u­al­ly adding or remov­ing pages as text reflows. InDesign CS4 can do it for you–even when reflow occurs because of hid­ing or show­ing copy through the new Conditional Text feature.

More Informative Links Panel: You prob­a­bly think your CS2/CS3 Links pan­el is pret­ty good, what with its quick Relink, Update Link, and Edit Original but­tons. How much more could Adobe improve such a sim­ple thing? Plenty.

The Links Panel (cropped; click for full image).

The new CS4 Links pan­el has all the fea­tures of its pre­de­ces­sors as well as a ton of new infor­ma­tion and abil­i­ty. Its ful­ly cus­tomiz­able to show, among numer­ous oth­er attrib­ut­es, each linked asset’s sta­tus, size, col­or space, lay­er over­rides, actu­al PPI, effec­tive PPI, trans­paren­cy, scale, and much, much more. The list of linked assets can also be sort­ed by any column–file name, sta­tus, size, and so on–and auto­mat­i­cal­ly groups mul­ti­ple instances of the same asset under a sin­gle head­ing; updat­ing all instances of the same image is as sim­ple as updat­ing just one.

The coolest new fea­ture, the one that real­ly push­es this fea­ture way up on my Top 10 list, is the fact that the Links pan­el now shows thumb­nails of linked images. No more scratch­ing your head, guess­ing which eso­teric file­name is the image you need to replace. Now you can see linked images, direct­ly in the links pan­el. Even bet­ter, a new Link Info pane affixed to the bot­tom of the pan­el shows a larg­er thumb­nail and com­plete details of the asset.

Smart Guides: Smart Guides will hit you as one of those how-did-I-ever-work-without-these fea­tures. Instead of lit­ter­ing your doc­u­ment with ruler guides and grids and con­stant­ly refer­ring to the Transform or Control pan­el to posi­tion, rotate, and size objects, smart guides appear like mag­ick when need­ed and wink out when not. Object dimen­sions and rota­tion data appear in tooltip-like pop­ups while ver­ti­cal, hor­i­zon­tal, and even rota­tion­al guides appear while draw­ing, mov­ing, or rotat­ing objects to facil­i­tate pre­cise object siz­ing and posi­tion­ing; once the object is des­e­lect­ed, guides and tooltips dis­ap­pear, leav­ing the work­space uncluttered.

Smart Alignment and Spacing: Hand-in-glove with Smart Guides is on-the-fly align­ment and spac­ing of objects with­out the Align pan­el. Drag an object near anoth­er and smart guides appear along their com­mon planes. Move an object near the ver­ti­cal or hor­i­zon­tal cen­ter of the page and a new smart guide appears enabling instant cen­ter­ing of the object on the page. Even bet­ter, enhanced snap-to options make quick work of align­ing objects to one anoth­er or the page, and even of spac­ing out mul­ti­ple objects rel­a­tive one another–again, with­out even open­ing the Align panel.

Smart Guides, Smart Alignment, and Smart Spacing in action (cropped; click for full image).

More than any oth­er new fea­ture Smart Guides, Smart Alignment, and Smart Spacing com­bine to be the biggest improve­ment you’ll enjoy in your every­day work. By rel­e­gat­ing the Transform and Align pan­els to occa­sion­al instead of con­stant use, these new fea­tures will undoubt­ed­ly save the aver­age InDesign user cumu­la­tive hours of tedious posi­tion­ing and align­ment per week. Unlike CS3, InDesign CS4 does­n’t intro­duce any major cre­ative enhance­ments for the aver­age user, there­fore the mas­sive pro­duc­tiv­i­ty enhance­ment inher­ent in Smart Guides, Smart Alignment, and Smart Spacing become the CS4 Killer Feature, and my num­ber one favorite fea­ture. I think they’ll become your favorite as well.

Keep watch­ing Quark VS InDesign​.com for more on InDesign and the entire Creative Suite 4 line of prod­ucts. Once Adobe releas­es ship­ping ver­sions instead of betas, we’ll present the offi­cial Quark VS InDesign​.com InDesign CS4 review.