On February 26, Michael Ninness, the senior product manager of Adobe InDesign, demonstrated something at Mogo Media’s InDesign Conference that he was careful to call a “technology preview,” but which seems like a clear signal of Adobe’s direction in the near future.
Ninness opened the conference by showing the audience examples of several digital magazines, catalogs, and brochures that begin as InDesign documents, only to be converted to Flash in a long, laborious process. According to Ninness, the publishers who choose this workflow aren’t masochists — instead, they value InDesign’s strengths as a general layout tool, yet they want the interactivity Flash affords. The long road of cut and paste has been their only choice.
What Did that Splash Screen Say?!
But then Ninness fired up an application that appeared to be labeled “InDesign CS4.? (More on this not-really-a-bombshell in a bit.) As David Blatner, editorial director of the InDesign Conference, described, Ninness opened a file with a basic layout, “created a regular frame, and then opened a Buttons panel that appeared to combine CS3’s Behaviors dialog box and the States panel. He then exported his layout (using File > Export) as a Flash (SWF) file that included basic interactivity.”
You heard that right: Flash. Out of InDesign.
Ninness also opened an article excerpted from InDesign Magazine in a program labeled Flash Professional CS4 (again, more on that in a sec), and exported. The pages of the InDesign file became individual movie clips that were then placed on frames in the Flash timeline.
Figure 1. A screenshot of the InDesign Magazine article in InDesign. Click on this figure for a larger version.
Figure 2. A screenshot of the InDesign Magazine article in Flash. Click on this figure for a larger version.
He finished the demo by playing an SWF that included page transitions, animated objects, and buttons he clicked to zoom in on specific images. Ninness explained that these bells and whistles were added by Flash developer Chris Converse.
Print Isn’t Dead, But….
After the technology preview, I asked Ninness several pointed questions. With print and the Web — not to mention print and mobile devices — being such different animals, why in the world would you use InDesign to create something destined for Flash?
“Because InDesign is a general-purpose layout tool, and it shouldn’t matter if you’re outputting to paper or to pixels,” he shot back. “How long has it been able to export to interactive PDF? How long has it supported XML? In CS3, we added XHTML and eBook export. Flash export is a logical evolution to extending the purpose of InDesign.”
“Print is not dead,” he continued. “But design for print only is dying. As advertising dollars shift to online media, traditional print designers are wondering how they can participate in a changing market. We believe one of Adobe’s roles is to enable the transition. Say you have no concept of ActionScript or animation, but you know typography and great composition. You should be able to use the tool you know and love: InDesign.”
Does this mean there’s no need for developers who are expert in Flash? “No, Flash experts are still very important,” Ninness said. “Today’s technology preview showed our early thinking on what it could be like to provide a hand-off from InDesign to a Flash developer.”
How does this technology preview compare to Quark Interactive Designer? “Adobe doesn’t feel that it’s necessary to put Flash inside InDesign,” he replied. “We already have the industry-standard tool; we’re just trying to give the traditional print designer a path to participating in the changing market. Quark doesn’t have a Creative Suite, so their only viable alternative is to attempt to recreate a Flash authoring experience inside QuarkXPress. This morning’s technology preview demonstrated what kind of integration could be possible between two of Adobe’s flagship products.”
When I asked Ninness whether this technology preview was related to Bordeaux, he declined to comment.
Don’t Get Excited Yet
Now for the question you’ve all been waiting for: Will the next version of InDesign create Flash files? Not necessarily, says Ninness. “This is a technology preview. Just because the software I used today says ‘CS4’ doesn’t mean these features will get into the final shipping products.”
When pressed to reveal when CS4 will ship, he reminded me of the company’s traditional 18- to 24-month revision cycle. Let’s see… since CS3 came out in April 2007, that puts a CS4 release at somewhere between December 2008 and April 2009. Yes, a lot can happen between now and then. I won’t hold my breath, but you can bet I’ll be keeping a sharp eye out for any more news I can share with you.
This article was last modified on January 18, 2023
This article was first published on February 27, 2008
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