DPS to drop support of InDesign CS5 and CS5.5 in fall of 2014

Currently, InDesign CS5, CS5.5, CS6, and CC are equal citizens for production of Folio content for Adobe Digital Publishing Suite projects. In other words, there isn’t anything in the Folio Builder panel or the Folio Overlays panel that is different between these versions.

However, according to the “What’s new in this release” notes for DPS v30:

"Advance notice: DPS to drop support of InDesign CS5.5 and CS5 in v32: With the v32 release (tentatively scheduled for September 2014), InDesign CS5.5 and InDesign CS5 will still be able to create source documents for DPS, but uploading articles to the Folio Producer Service will require InDesign CS6 or later."

So, if you’re still on InDesign CS5 or CS5.5 and you work with Adobe DPS, you’re probably going to have to upgrade come fall. It is unclear from this notice if users of CS5/CS5.5 will still be able to create interactive overlays for DPS. The notice states that they “will still be able to create source documents for DPS”, because these are just InDesign files, of course. But I suspect that the Folio Overlays panel will get revised, and no longer function with CS5/CS5.5.

New "must-have" plug-in for DPS

I just gave the new Object States Assistant plug-in from Automatication a whirl. All I can say is, if you do Adobe Digital Publishing Suite work, you must have this plug-in. Period.

The cornerstone of creating interactive content for DPS is multi-state objects (mso’s) and buttons. Complex interactive content can result in mso's with lots of states, and lots of buttons. The Objects States Assistant plug-in adds a bunch of missing commands for working with mso’s that should be included with InDesign, but are not. For example, you can:

- Add selected objects to all states in a single operation, and the objects stay in place and don’t lose their button actions

- Add objects to multiple states in a single operation, and the objects stay in place and don’t lose their button actions

- Paste objects into all states in a single operation, and the objects don’t lose their button actions

- Delete multiple states in a single operation

- Release multiple states in a single operation

- “Step and repeat” a single button and have each new button point to a different state in the mso

- Quickly display the next/previous state with a single button click

These commands are available through the OSA panel, which can be found in Window > Interactive > Object States Assistant, and also in the States panel menu. In the image below, I’ve docked the OSA panel with the State panel.

Of course, you can add keyboard shortcuts with InDesign’s Keyboard Shortcut Editor to any of these new commands, making it even more useful.

2 Adobe DPS Webinar recordings to watch

I recently did 2 live Webinars for Adobe about the Adobe Digital Publishing Suite workflow. Below are links to recordings of the webinars if you’d like to watch them at your leisure. 

The first Webinar, presented on 1/16/2014, is titled “How to Create Content for Adobe DPS Apps”. You can watch the recording here.

The second Webinar, presented on 2/4/2014 is titled “How to Build Your First App and Submit it to the Apple App Store”. You can watch the recording here.

Global vs. Non-Global colors in Illustrator

Here’s an old feature of Illustrator that I find that people consistently don’t know about:

When you create a color swatch in InDesign, and then assign that swatch to a bunch of objects, when you later change the color of the swatch, all the objects that were colored with that swatch change also.

But Illustrator swatches behave completely different. By default, Illustrator process-color swatches are “non-global swatches”. This means that you can color objects with those swatches, but if you later change the swatch color, the objects do not change color. In other words, the swatch is used to initially color the object, but that’s it. There is no connection between the object and the swatch once the object is colored with the swatch.

However, you can make any swatch “global” by choosing this in Swatch Options. A global swatch in Illustrator behaves like the swatches in InDesign. When you apply a global swatch to an object, it is “assigned” to that object forever, so if you change the color of the global swatch later, the color of the object updates.

Global swatches appear in the swatches panel with a small white triangle in the bottom right corner.

This discussion only applies to process colors. Spot colors are always global in Illustrator. For more information, see the Illustrator help topic about this.