Great update to InDesign CC: Pop-up notes

Latte Other Software & Development
1

Last year, when I was still living in Seattle, I met for two hours with Adobe’s InDesign team. One of my strongest pleas was for ID to turn footnotes for print versions into pop-up EPUB notes on Apple’s iPads, a feature that other ebook readers are likely to adopt soon.

Yeah! I just got my fondest wish…

This morning I discovered that ID for the Creative Cloud has been updated and now includes just that feature. Here’s a video about it:

helpx.adobe.com/creative-cloud/ … n2014.html

And here’s one about the other new features, mostly involving hyperlinks, fonts and synching workspaces between devices:

helpx.adobe.com/creative-cloud/ … n2014.html

And here are videos about the other features of ID-CC.

helpx.adobe.com/creative-cloud/ … esign.html

For me that’s marvelous, because I’ve got about a dozen serious books whose footnotes turned into inline notes or jump-to-and-back endnotes would look awful in digital.

But there’s something other Scrivener users might want to keep in mind. Documents written with notes in Scrivener can be exported to Word format and that document imported into ID with the footnotes intact.

Exported to EPUB, the resulting pop-up notes are so unobtrusive, they can be used for other purposes. One of the most obvious would be to create Read Twice mysteries and novels. The first time, readers wouldn’t look at the notes. They’d just enjoy figuring out who the killer was. The second time, they’d read using the author’s notes to see where he dropped hints about the killer. Ditto background to fantasy tales etc.

And those wondering if the $50 a month for CC membership is worth it might either opt for a $10/month single app membership or, do what I do and layout books for other authors and publishers. A couple of hours of work each month will recoup the cost of CC membership.

Here’s where you can find more details about joining Creative Cloud:

adobe.com/products/creativecloud.html

There is a one-month free trial.

The plus of using ID-CC is that it can already create marvelously looking print documents and Adobe is making it easier and easier to create digital documents from that same document. I can tweak a printed version of my printed version of my book so ID is creating a high-quality EPUB version is about half an hour. Time saved like that can easily cover the cost of membership.

And my work flow is to write in Scrivener until the document no longer needs major editing. I then place it into InDesign, where I edit and lay it out. It’s actually not that hard to edit in InDesign and I can apply tweaks so that chapters don’t waste pages by wrapping just a few sentences onto the last page. It’s actually nice to edit in what looks like the final printed version.

–Michael W. Perry, Inkling Books, Auburn, AL

2

More details about the update at Creative Pro:

creativepro.com/article/adob … oud-update

And a description of the Typekit improvements at InDesign Secrets:

indesignsecrets.com/typekit-upda … cc-9-2.php

Terry White has an excellent look at all the CC updates, including that to InDesign here:

terrywhite.com/january-2014-upda … design-cc/

Ah, they’re calling it version 9.2. No more huge 9.0 to 10.0 jumps. Yeah!

–Mike

3

David Bergsland is a very experienced author and publisher. When I read his review of the latest update to InDesign, I thought it was detailed for a just-out upgrade. How did he find out so much, so fast, I asked.

bergsland.org/2014/01/announ … sign-cc9-2

It turns out that he’d been a beta-tester and already has a quite reasonably priced 474-page book on the new version, one that pays particular attention to its ePub abilities:

amazon.com/Writing-InDesign- … 149520023X

If you’re using ID, you might want to get it. I plan to do so. Time saved could cover the cost.

And if you can’t afford Adobe’s $50/month for all their apps plan, you might want to look into their $20/month plan for just InDesign. Get the best of both worlds. Write in Scrivener and do your final editing and layout in InDesign for something that can look really good in print or digital.

And yes, ID has a steep learning curve, but once you get past that, you’ll find its power will save you a lot of time. For instance, if you’ve got a lot of web page links in your book, ID will automatically check each to make sure it’s a valid length. That can save hours and hours of labor. And managing links to graphics inside ID is marvelous easy.