How to type a tab character in an InDesign table

When you are working with a table in Adobe InDesign, pressing the Tab key moves you from cell to cell within the table. But what if you want to actually include a tab character in the text within a cell?

On the Mac, you can simply press option-tab to insert a tab character in a table cell. But in Windows, alt-tab is reserved for switching between running apps (try it, its really useful!). So in Windows InDesign, you can insert a tab character in a table cell by choosing Type > Insert Special Character > Other > Tab. If you need to do this frequently, consider adding a keyboard shortcut for this command. Here’s how:

1. In InDesign, choose Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts.

2. Fill in the dialog box as show below, and then click the Assign button.

3. When prompted to create a new set, click Yes.

4. Give the set a name, and click OK.

Now, you can just press ctrl-tab to insert a tab character within a table cell.

Resources for publishing a DPS app to Google Play

I’m presenting a webinar for Adobe on July 29, 2014 called "How to Build an Android App and Submit it to Google Play”. You can register for this free 1-hour webinar here. 

While preparing for this session, I gathered up a list of resources that are helpful for the Android app build / Google Play app submission process:

Adobe Help: DPS supported feature list chart that compares the features supported by iOS, Android, Windows, and the Web Viewer 

Adobe Help: Building native DPS apps for Android devices

Adobe Help: DPS publishing process for Android devices

Web-based DPS App Builder

Google Play Developer Help Center

Alternatives for distributing Android apps

Android and Google Play Brand Guidelines

Google Play Badge AI files

Google Play Website Badge Generator

Android Device Art Generator for creating simulations of app screens on various Android devices

Easily create DPS splash screens

Every Adobe Digital Publishing Suite app for the iPad must contain 4 splash screens in the following sizes: 768 x 1024 pixel, 1024 x 768 pixel, 1536 x 2048 pixel, and 2048 x 1536 pixel. For iPhone apps, you must include 3 splash screens sized to 320x480, 640x960, and 640x1136 pixels. These splash screens must be saved in the PNG format. The splash screen appears on the screen momentarily while the app loads.

I’ve created an InDesign template to make creating these various sizes of the splash screens quick and easy. You can download the template here. 

The template contains 7 pages in each of the pixel dimensions listed above. Create your desired artwork on the pages corresponding to the sizes that you need, then choose File > Export and export the pages in PNG format. Fill in the Export PNG dialog box as shown below, and PNGs with the exact dimensions required will be output.

Unfortunately, InDesign only exports PNG-24 images. To save on file size in your app, you should open each of these PNG images in Photoshop, choose File > Save for Web, and save each file in PNG-8 format.