James Wamser has updated his indispensable InDesign New Features Guide so it includes the October 2020 Release (aka InDesign 2021 or version 16.0).
The free interactive PDF offers 126 pages of details on InDesign features with bookmarks that you can use to jump to any version.
It also includes a clickable index of features, as well as a list of InDesign resources on the Web, which you can add to by using an email link to send James your favorites. Thanks again, James!
This article was last modified on October 26, 2020
This article was first published on October 22, 2020
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I added System Requirements for macOS and Windows (See Table of Contents) and updated the Index.
InDesign users be warned. Because I’m working on a complex 550-page science text that is almost complete, I’ve deliberately chosen NOT to download this 2021 version. It’s simply not worth the risk, particularly since the new version has no features I need.
But last night Creative Cloud unloaded and installed the 2021 version, making it my default. Even worse, it deleted my 2020 version. Sorry, Adobe, but that’s NOT acceptable behavior. I manage my workflow not you.
I call this Tech Fascism and increasingly it seems industry wide. Adobe has dictated that I must move to the 2021 version. I may be able to reinstall the 2020 version, but I shouldn’t have to do that. Apple doesn’t force new OS installs, but does its best to prevent users from going back a version if an upgrade is causing them trouble. Facebook removes posts it doesn’t like, offering excuses that aren’t even remotely rationale or consistent. Google, insiders have revealed, tweaks search results to favor certain points of view and censor others. And of course industry wide there has been little to no effort to oppose China’s efforts to turn its already repressive one-party dictatorship into the largest and most intrusive regime in human history.
I suspect there’s something autistic-like that is a part of being attracted to a certain areas of technology. It results in an inability to appreciate that people have widely differing POVs. I’ve worked with autistic children. That inability is the essence of the autism spectrum disorder. Many don’t even care. Even those who want to understand people have trouble doing so. One variety, the Asperger Syndrome, seems common in today’s geeky industries, as this article notes:
“People with Asperger syndrome generally develop spoken language in the same way as typically developing children but have a tough time with social communication. These difficulties become more obvious as they get older and social expectations increase. Because people with Asperger syndrome are often very intelligent (but “quirky”) the disorder is sometimes nicknamed “geek syndrome” or “little professor syndrome.”
https://www.verywellhealth.com/what-are-the-different-types-of-autism-260611
I’ve know people with Aspergers. They love computers and computer games precisely because those things are so mechanically predictable. A given input gets a specific output. People are not like that.
At the political level I call this the Asimov syndrome. When I was about twelve, I was an avid science fiction fan, having read most of those books in my local library. Then I read Asimov’s Foundation series and became openly political for the first time in my life. I loathed his all too obvious belief that an elite should be managing society in ways it saw fit, often covertly. I was so disgusted, I gave up reading scifi even though there are scifi authors who have the opposite POV.
And yeah, there is also something disturbingly authoritarian in the psychiatric community efforts to ban what that linked article notes is a highly useful diagnosis called the Asperger syndrome. Medically, I also find that disgusting because attaching a single label to a wide variety of behavioral issues may blind researchers to what may be a wide variety of illnesses with different causes. That, in turn, could delay discovering the proper treatment for each. Aspergers, for instance, can be highly useful in certain occupations. They don’t need fixing, just opportunities to showcase their talents.
–Michael W. Perry, medical writer
Michael, I can see how that would be very disturbing. However, I’ve not seen the CC app install a new version, unless the Update Automatically feature was enabled in that little menu in the upper-right corner:
Thanks Mike. Hopefully people find this useful.