Specific fonts required to run Illustrator and Dreamweaver

Beware: if you don't have all four styles of Verdana (regular, bold, italic, and bold italic) installed, Illustrator CC will crash. Many users basically ignore Verdana. Installing Microsoft Office, and perhaps other apps, may install new versions of Verdana and Tahoma, which could screw things up and cause Illustrator to crash.

More information about this can be found on the Illustrator forum.

To run Dreamweaver CC, you must have Verdana and Tahoma installed. But at least Dreamweaver notifies you of the problem.

Creative Cloud and data security

A frequent complaint that I hear is "my IT department won't let us move to Creative Cloud because of data security fears." Adobe has created a PDF titled "Adobe Creative Cloud Security FAQ for IT". Contents include answers to questions such as "Where is Creative Cloud hosted?" and "Do the provided services support encryption?"

See also the Creative Cloud FAQ for more information about security. 

Perhaps passing these resources on to your IT department will help "grease the skids" for your migration to Creative Cloud!

Change Photoshop's Undo shortcut to match other Adobe programs

Most of the Adobe creative applications feature unlimited undos. And to access these multiple undos, you can use the command-z (Mac) and ctrl-z (Windows) shortcuts. To redo, use command-shift-z (Mac) and ctrl-shift-z (Windows). However, Photoshop is different. Photoshop offers only a single undo. But, in its place, it features a History Panel, allowing you to move forward and back in history. But you can change Photoshop's keyboard shortcuts so that undo works like you'd expect it to. Here's how:

1. Choose Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts

2. In the Keyboard Shortcuts dialog box, click on the triangle to the left of the word Edit to spin the Edit category open. 

3. Click in the Shortcut field to the right of Undo/Redo, and press the delete key to remove the keyboard shortcut assigned to Undo/Redo.

4. Click in the Shortcut field to the right of Step Backward, and press command-z (Mac) or ctrl-z (Windows)

5. Click the Accept button.

6. Click on the Save icon at the top of the dialog box, give your shortcut set a name and click the Save button.

Now, command-z (Mac) or ctrl-z (Windows) will step backward through the History panel, giving you multiple Undo capability. Add the shift key to step forward through the History panel.

Non-square, high-res DPS Table of Contents icons

When you use Adobe Digital Publishing Suite to create a tablet app, a table of contents is automatically built for the app, with one entry in the table of contents for each "article", or InDesign file, in the folio.

An icon image for each entry in the table of contents is automatically created by DPS. This automatic icon is just a shrunk-down version of a square region of the first screen of the article…usually not attractive and what you want. You can customize this icon by creating a 70 x 70 pixel PNG image. Then select the article in the Folio Builder panel and choose Article Properties. In the dialog box that appears, click the folder icon under Table of Contents Preview, and navigate to the PNG image that you saved. 

Here are 2 cool tips:

1. The PNG image can include a transparent background. This allows you to create thumbnails that appear in the table of contents as non-square icons. Be sure to save the icon as a PNG-24 image. Here are a couple examples of this:

 

2. A 70 x 70 pixel image looks fine on non-retina displays. But to make the icon look even better on high-resolution displays such as the iPad 3 and 4, create a 140 x 140 pixel image. This is particularly useful if the icon includes type or line art. When you include an icon higher than 70 pixel resolution, you'll receive the error message pictured below, but it still works. Proceed with caution and test your app to make sure performance is acceptable.

How to make "Paste Into State" easier

If you do a lot of work with Adobe Digital Publishing Suite, you will inevitably create a lot of "multi-state objects". And, you will find yourself frequently using the "Paste Into State" command found in the Object States panel menu. After choosing this command 50 or 60 times, you'll find yourself thinking "there's got to be a better way!" Here are 3 ways to make this much easier:

1. Use the Paste Into State button at the bottom of the Object States panel.

2. Assign a keyboard shortcut to the Paste Into State command.

a. Choose Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts

b. Select Panel Menus for the Product Area

c. Select Object States: Paste Into State from the list of commands

d. Click in the New Shortcut field, and press your desired shortcut (I use option-v)

e. Click the Assign button

f. Click the OK button

3. Try the Digital Publishing Pack 1 set of handy scripts. One of these scripts automates the process of pasting selected objects into multiple states at once!