Review: Adobe InDesign CS5
To jump to specific sections in this review, click any of the following links:
1. Multiple Page Sizes; Span, Split, and Balance Columns
2. Simplified Transformations and Selections
3. The Gap Tool; Gridified Frames and Super Step-and-Repeat; Layers Rebuilt
4. Metadata Captions; Mini Bridge
5. Interactive Documents
6. Workflow and Collaboration; (Not Quite) All The Little Things
7. Buying Advice
Metadata Captions
Graphic frames can now use the metadata built into the images within them to generate captions. The process is as simple as right-clicking an image, choosing Caption Setup and designating the desired metadata field(s) you want to use (Figure 9). Once all options have been set, you need to exit the dialog, right-click the image and choose either Generate Live Caption or Generate Static Caption.
Figure 9. In the Caption Setup dialog, static text can be appended before and after the metadata, and you can assign the caption’s paragraph style, position relative to the image frame, offset value, and its destination layer.
Live captions have the advantage of dynamically adapting to changes to the file’s metadata. If the metadata is updated, the Links panel shows the image as modified, and updating the image updates the caption. Unfortunately, live captions have the same disadvantage as Text Variables — they can’t wrap, so they have to fit entirely on one line or the text is crushed together to fit. This is because live captions are, in fact, a new kind of Text Variable added to support this feature.
One way around the text wrapping limitation is to generate a static caption, which populates a text frame with a caption produced from the current metadata. That text will wrap and behave like any normal text, but it’s not dynamic. If the metadata changes, the caption won’t.
The Caption Setup dialog and the caption generation options make this a full-featured text variable, but some of its other behaviors make it more limited. Changes made in the Caption Setup dialog will not automatically update the “live” caption. Unlike every other type of text variable, metadata captions do not auto-update when their parameters are changed. You must generate a new caption.
Limitations aside, the live option is ideal for short captions that don’t need to wrap (think product names, catalog item numbers, etc.), and even the static caption option should encourage designers who aren’t already doing so to start building metadata into their images so information and images don’t become separated from project to project.
Mini Bridge
InDesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop CS5 each include a new Mini Bridge panel that offers a subset of Bridge features within each application. The options are limited to Bridge’s browsing, sorting, filtering, placing, and ranking features. You can’t use Mini Bridge to add file metadata, and none of Bridge’s more sophisticated features are available, but Mini Bridge is a much more efficient and visual way to access and place images than using File > Place, dragging from Finder or Explorer windows, or switching back and forth from “big” Bridge (Figure 10).
Figure 10. Any InDesign file with placed images appears in both Mini Bridge and “big” Bridge with a small link icon. Right-clicking the file’s thumbnail and choosing Show Linked Files from the context menu builds an instant temporary collection of all linked files in that document. Also, a new InDesign file-handling preference enables the full Bridge application to preview the first page; first 2, 5, or 10 pages; or all pages in the document.
Mini Bridge options include thumbnail, filmstrip, detail and list views, and full-size previews for selected images in Mini Bridge are shown or hidden just by hitting the spacebar. A Review Mode presents the current files in a carousel-style presentation that allows access to the Loupe function, and a Slideshow mode offers full-screen previews of certain documents (including video and SWF files).
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With the advent of CS Adobe did a pretty good job implementing little intuitive features that made the use of CS products more efficient (like double clicking a text box to automatically switch the text tool for editing). However, there is one of these features they still haven’t gotten around to that would make my life much easier, namely clicking and dragging text to move it rathr than having to cut and paste every time you want to move a word or phrase within a block of text. Word and many other programs have had this feature for years and it is second nature to me now. How about it Adobe?
This can be done by editing your InDesign preferences, under Type > Drag and Drop Text Editing. Click on Enable in Layout View and Enable in Story Editor.
Not only “No Split Columns in Table Cells” BUT there is absolutely no improvement to TABLES in general. It’s as if they forgot. It’s such a heavily used feature but yet nothing. I guess it’ll be another 18 months.
Excellent review of the new features of InDesign CS5, so often overshadowed by the advances of Photoshop CS5. I also appreciate the video demonstrations, which are brief but very instructive. Good work. Sharon Chester, Wandering Albatross
Thorough and informed review of the high points of the new features in InDesign CS5. Very well done, Mike! And good catch on the SWF-in-PDFs problem.
I guess the one thing I’d want to argue (mildly) is, when you said “Sadly, there’s no preference or option available that auto-enables Track Changes for all new text frames.” That’s a feature that sounds like it’d be great, until you use it, and then you say What was I thinking … LOL
If that was actually possible, and you enabled it, then anything you added to one of those new text frames would get the “added text” markup. So it’d be useless, really. The whole thing would be one big markup. Try turning it on manually for an empty frame, then fill it with placed or pasted or placeholder text, and look at that in the Story Editor to see what I mean.
I loved the videos, they really added a lot to the review. A superb job.
Anne-Marie
indesignsecrets.com
This is by far the best review of any of the CS5 products!
Thank you Michael Murphy and CreativePro for delivering this enormous work.
Now I’m going back to finishing it!
Bill Eger
——–
An old man, a writer who likes people, living in the middle of the Pacific ocean near volcanoes, in tradewinds and soft bird songs.
I hear you about the lack of table enhancements. It’s one of several features I would have liked to have seen receive some attention in this release. Had Adobe not updated any existing features in this release, and only added new ones, I would have come down harder on that. But when I see things like the new Layers panel and a feature like Multiple Page Sizes (which is new, but something we’ve been begging for version after version), I can’t really fault them for not doing everything we might want.
Hi!, anyone know how to disable that damn Content Indicator?!
I keep selecting it! argghh!!!
Great review! Congrats on a thorough job. I’ve used inDesign since the very very first version as i swore after a ruined experience with Quark tech support I would never ever go back to Quark. Now while I wish Quark would stay competitive to keep this industry from being a monopoly, I sure think this product just continues to get better and better. I look forward to the install…
My one question is legacy use: Things like multiple page sizes surely won’t be backwards-compatible to CS4, but are there any other issues? Does the ‘save as Cs4’ option exist?
I think Adobe figured some people might not adjust well to the Content Indicator. To disable it, just go to View > Extras > Hide Content Grabber.
If you export a CS5 file with multiple page sizes to IDML format (the only backward-compatible option) and open it in InDesign CS4, the custom-sized pages are converted to the default page size at which the document was created.
>>No more grabbing content, you perv!<< :)
If your pages are set up as facing (in spreads), PDF (interactive) will not output as single pages, but in spreads.
The mentioning of CS4 coming in the middle of a down economy does nothing for those who bought it and now find that CS5 is out. How often does Adobe expect us to shell out those hundreds of $$ for the upgrades?
I agree fully with the previous poster. I only upgraded to CS4 last year—approx. 6 months after its launch—now I’m being asked to shell out again? On top of that there will be the inevitable Plug-in upgrade costs. For all the extras, CS4 & CS5 should really be a single upgrade. I think that these ” major” upgrades, which I’m coming to dread, are way too frequent.
Please disable this anoying feature!!!
I know this is long after the review in question. . . but there is an apparent issue with legacy files whereby an export to PDF will “fail” for no reason. This might have something to do with the Background Export feature, but there are no real fixes noted in Adobe’s InDesign Support Forum. This is such a devastating bug that I banished ID CS5 from the Dock and went back to CS4.
I’d love to know if this ever gets solved.
This is really WELL DONE! I just found it while looking for the same article on CS5.5 Hope you’ll do a new one soon!
Question: How do you do the moving landscape background? Your screen shots says loop, but I’m having a hard time getting it to work. What parameters did you use? THANKS SO MUCH!!!
dear all .
i want to receive daily indesign tips ..on my id [email protected] please help me for that..
thanks
Ankit chaauhan
I think the tables situation seems to have been fixed. And yes…Adobe is a bit behind a bit on the copy and paste.
I really appreciate this post. I’ve been looking all over for this! Thank God I found it on Bing. You have made my day! Thanks again…
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