Tiny Tutorials' Adobe Classroom

Chartwell font turns numbers into charts!

Canvai — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 20:36:25 +0000

Wow!!! The Chartwell font can take a set of numbers and turn it into a graph. I wonder what the glyphs panel for this font looksl like!

Chartwell is a tool for easily creating graphs in both web and print environments. In the format of a font, it utilizes OpenType to interpret and visualize the data. The data also remains editable, allowing for painless updates.

http://www.tktype.com/chartwell.php

Content Overlay Panel Expanded (DPS)

Canvai — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 00:44:39 +0000

The Overlay Creator Panel in InDesign CS5/5.5 lets you create interactive overlays for DPS publications. Some things, like hyperlinks and slideshows, can be done using existing tools already, while others are unique to DPS interactions. Certain content types (like hyperlinks) don’t really require much tweaking to work in DPS.

The Overlay Creator panel is contextual, meaning it’ll pull up the set of menus and options that it thinks you want, based on your selection. But I thought I would expand everything and put it together into one giant graphic, with the InDesign instruction next to it. Click to make it bigger.

Hyperlink : Create a hyperlink using either the Buttons panel or the Hyperlinks panel. When using the Buttons panel, create a Go To URL action. To view Hyperlink options, select the button or hyperlink object.
Slideshow: Create a multi-state object using the Object States panel (Window > Interactive > Object States).
To view Slide show options, select the multi-state object.
Image Sequence: Create a folder that contains the group of images to be displayed. Name the image files using ascending numbers, such as image001.jpg, image002.jpg, and so on.
Select a placeholder frame or an image to be used as a poster.
Audio & Video: Place an audio or video file, and select it to begin. To display an audio controller, create folder that contains a set of _play and _pause images.
Panorama: Create a folder containing the six images that represent the inside of a cube.
Web Content: Select the container frame in which the web content or local HTML file will display.
Pan & Zoom: Resize the image frame to crop the image you wish to pan or pan & zoom. The image frame is the view area in which the content scrolls.
To create a scrolling text frame, create a text frame and a contaner frame. Cut the text frame and use the Paste Into command to paste it into the container frame.
Select the container frame to view Pan & Zoom options.

Buttons for Digital Publishing Suite (DPS) Part II

Canvai — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 00:41:12 +0000

Some button actions will work for DPS, some won’t. Let’s take a closer look.

Buttons That Work:

Go to Destination
Go to First Page
Go to Last Page
Go To URL
Go to Page
Go To State
Go To Next State
Go To Previous State

Basically, (excluding the PDF Only commands) all of these are “Go To” button actions. None of the other ones work. Let’s go through them and figure out why these actions won’t work.

Go to Next Page / Go To Previous Page: There’s already built in navigation in DPS for these sort of thing.
Show/Hide Buttons : Button visibility states aren’t honored. You can’t “Hide Till Trigger”, so you can’t hide/show buttons.
Animation: It doesn’t like SWFs. Objects set in the Animation Panel won’t animate in DPS, so there is no point having an animation button action.
PDF Only: well… it’s PDF Only.

Margins & Columns Layout Adjustment: There and Back Again

Canvai — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 16:52:09 +0000

I took some screen shots of the Margins & Columns Layout Adjustments changes as I increased and decreased columns to see how InDesign reworks the boxes. The blue boxes are snapped to both sides of the columns, and the yellow boxes are snapped to only one side.

Click to view slideshow.

Buttons for Digital Publishing Suite (DPS)

Canvai — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 21:48:11 +0000

When using buttons to design for DPS, not all button actions will carry over. These are the button functions that will work:

Go to Destination
Go to First Page
Go to Last Page
Go To URL
Go to Page
Go To State
Go To Next State
Go To Previous State

InDesign Multi-State Object can be grouped, have different content

Canvai — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 21:41:48 +0000

I just tried this and it totally works.

You can convert a group of objects into a multi state object. This makes it easy to swap out more than one item at a time.
The same object, when in a different object state, can hold different content. In one object state, the object can be a text frame, in another object state, it can be an image frame.
the same object, when in a different object state, can change shapes (and size) too!

Kindle Fire vs. Nook Tablet! Fight!

Canvai — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 00:39:15 +0000

I pre-ordered the Kindle Fire when it was announced. Only to un-pre-order it when the Nook Tablet was announced. Today, after playing with demo units of both at the local mall, I decided on the Kindle Fire. Kindle fire wins. Read on to find out how I made my decision.

The Setup

I don’t have Amazon Prime. I don’t have Hulu+, I don’t have Nextflix. I also don’t have plans on buying digital content. Some reviews gleefully argue for the Kindle, saying that you get FREE content from Amazon when you have Prime. That’s ridiculous. How could it be free when you already paid for it?

Anyway, this means I will be comparing the two devices as they come straight out of the box. No extra services or add-on included.

Storage

6gb usable storage with Fire. 1gb with Tablet. Fire wins. Sure, you can expand the Nook’s storage with microSD, but then it’s not a out-of-the-box comparison. 6gb is plenty. I don’t like storing stuff locally anyways. The other many gigs of storage that the Tablet is storing for exclusive B&N content? Why don’t I have access to this? And why so much space? B&N has the worse appstore between the two.

Price

If you have disposable income. $50 price difference isn’t that big of a deal. I would just buy the one I like better. But there’s no way I would let my nook sit with 1gb usable storage. If I plan on side loading anything, the price difference becomes greater. It’s not so much that microSD cards cost that much money, I just don’t like the idea that I have to make a purchase on top of a purchase to feel like I got a fully functional product. It’s like paying for floor mats when you buy a car. Shouldn’t that be included already?

On the other hand, I also feel that, from the majority of the other reviews out there, having Prime content on the Fire is an indispensable part of the experience. So after the month trial is up, what am I left with? Fortunately, my media consumption isn’t severely undercut with the absence of Prime.

Test Drive

I’m not special so I have to go to the mall to test drive the unit. This has no bearing on owning the unit, but after all the reviews and spec comparisons, I was still undecided. The hands-on is important.

Kindle Fire: I saw this at Target. The interface is different, but I can figure it out pretty quick. Settings, wi-fi, and the browser were all disabled for the demo unit. This is lame, because I really wanted to dig through the settings. There was quite a bit of software installed already. The navigation wasn’t silky smooth, but it wasn’t horrible.

Nook Tablet: I went to the B&N store to test drive this, and seeing it side-by-side with the Nook Color really made me wonder why I shouldn’t just buy the Nook Color for $50 less. and if I was going to do that, why wouldn’t I just buy a Kindle Fire? The demo unit was running low on battery. But it was on wi-fi, so I was able to test out youtube and flickr. The connection was a bit slow, but I think a lot of people are online.

Both units are pretty reading-centric. But the book-shelf metaphor seemed to work better than the ‘big pile of icons’ metaphor.

The Display

The Kindle Fire and the Nook Tablet both have the same resolution and dimensions, but the Nook Tablet is supposed to have a Vivid View something something and be better at video playback. Honestly, unless you are going to be using both units side by side, all the time, and the only thing you are doing is to compare the two, the differences won’t make much of a difference. They are both good.

Hardware Design

This is a big one for me. The Kindle Fire just looks a lot better. The glass from the display extends all the way to the bevel, like the iPad, and the backing has a soft rubber coating on it. I feel as if the only thing I need to do is slap a screen protector on it and I can use the Fire as is.

The Nook Tablet, aside from looking too similar to the Nook Color, also feels plasticy and cheap. The Nook Color on display next to the Tablet was an older unit, and you can see the paint wearing off at the edges. It feels like I would want to buy a cover for this, because it doesn’t seem like it would wear well. having a physical button for home and volume is nice, but again, the buttons feel plasticy.

Kindle Fire wins.

Other Hardware Capabilities

In terms of hardware, Nook Tablet wins out. The ability to expand storage, and a microphone is nice. Too bad it doesn’t do anything for me. I am hoping for a skype app for the Nook Tablet, but out of the box, it doesn’t make a difference right now.

The Apps

Both devices offer a curated app store instead of the full Android Market. Amazon has more apps, and more free apps.

Kindle Fire wins.

The Verdict

So, it’s the Kindle Fire for me. More apps, better better looking device, lower price, and a supposedly better browser makes the Fire the winner!

InDesign CS5 Image Fitting Options: Auto-Fit

Canvai — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 18:31:50 +0000

Auto fit is Awesome! With Auto-Fit selected, the image frame will automatically and continuously apply your content fitting preferences to that frame when the frame changes size. That means the image will resize itself (according to the fitting option) and realign itself (according to the Align From anchor location) each time you resize your image.

This is already great by itself, but what’s makes it more awesome is if you use this with the new Gap Tool, especially when you get the Gap Tool to grab spaces across multiple frames and they all auto-magically resize and realign!

InDesign CS5: Document Intent for Web

Canvai — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 17:21:13 +0000

InDesign CS5 allows you to create a document with either Web or Print as the document intent. There is only some minor differences between the two, so the document remains flexible for multi-destination output.

The Ruler is set to pixels (the Pixel Ruler is also new)
The default color swatches that come with a new document is in RGB
The transparency blend space is also set to RGB
In the New Document dialog box, InDesign also provides some handy, popular pixel dimensions in the preset drop down menu

Layout Adjustment for Margins and Columns!

Canvai — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 16:50:22 +0000

The Layout Adjustment feature lets InDesign do a lot of the heavy lifting when you re-size or reorient your page layout and moves the page items accordingly. Now, you can also have InDesign do the same when you change your margin’s and columns on a page!

What’s nice about layout adjust in Margins and Columns is that you get a Preview as you make the adjustments, so you know ahead of time whether you are pushing things too far and breaking the feature.

Layout > Margins and Columns