Quick Tip (Mac OS X)

Most Mac users should know the key combination of Command+Tab keys will bring up the Application Switcher in the middle of the screen and you can choose and switch between applications by clicking the Tab key while holding the Command key. By just clicking Command+Tab keys once will switch between two applications you use last.

But do you know that, by clicking Command+~(Tilde, the key just above the Tab key) you can switch between windows/documents within the same application. This comes handy if you have multiple documents open up in Indesign or multiple windows open in Firefox or Safari.

However, watch out for some exceptions like Adobe Photoshop, the key combination is Control+Tab keys instead of Command+~ to switch between opened documents.

Quick Tip – Turn off default Black Overprinting in Indesign

To quickly make black not to be overprinted as default, say artwork for newsprint, here is a trick:

Go to Indesign(menu bar)>Preferences>Appearance of Black (Command+K), or then uncheck the box Overprint [Black] Swatch at 100%. And done!

Technical (Indesign) – Advanced Email Links in Interactive PDF

Wonder how to create a link in interactive PDF that will open a new message window of the user’s mail client? And probably with recipient and subject line fields filled with specific details?
Here is the step-by-step trick:

1. Go to Window>Interactive>Hyperlinks and bring up the Hyperlinks palette.
2. Highlight the email address that you want to create a link on, click on the palette right facing arrow and create New Hyperlink.
3. In the New Hyperlink window, leave the Name same as the email address you highlighted, select Type as URL and fill up URL as follows:mailto:email address, email address
   (You can put a few here, and use Commas without space to separate them)
   For example:
   mailto:jackkwan@iinet.net.au,jackkwan@hotmail.com
   
   If you want to add recipients to carbon copy (cc) and/or blind carbon copy (bcc) the emails to:
   mailto:email address?ccemail address=&bcc=email address
   For example:
   mailto:jackkwan@iinet.net.au?cc=jack.kwan@fitnessfirst.com.au&bcc=jackkwan@hotmail.com
   
   And if you want to add a subject line:
   mailto:email address?subject=subject line
   For example:
   mailto:jackkwan@iinet.net.au?subject=RE: you think you can mac operate blog
   
   Now if you combine all the variables together:
   mailto:email address?cc=email address&bcc=email address&subject=subject line
   For example:
   mailto:jackkwan@iinet.net.au?cc=jack.kwan@fitnessfirst.com.au&bcc=jackkwan@hotmail.com&subject=RE: you think you can mac operate blog
   
   Click Okay and now you create a hyperlink. You can test the link by click the thick right arrow at the bottom of the Hyperlink palette. You can mix and match the combination above but make sure the syntax is right.
4. When you export your Indesign document to PDF, remember to check the Hyperlinks box under General option.

And remember, always check the links in your exported PDF to ensure that they work the way as you desire .

Technical (Indesign) – Find/Change Feature

This post continues from my last one and I will show you how to simply find and replace hyphens (-) to en dashes (–) throughout the document.

Bet most of you are familiar with Find/Change feature in Indesign. For those who seldom use this feature, go to Edit in the menu bar and you will find Find/Change or the keyboard shortcut for this is Command+F.

There are two ways to perform the task:

Method One.
If you are using Indesign CS3 or higher version, you will find the Query menu at the top. Click on Dash to En-dash and this will bring you to the GREP option. (GREP stands for General Regular Expression Parser and was a power text search utility based on Unix.)

Then you will find the fields already filled with preset values. Simply click on Find button and you should be directed to the first hyphen found in your body copy, if it exists in an expression of space+hyphen+space. Click on Change/Find button and it will replace your first hyphen with en dash and move on to the next one.

Tips:
I usually hit the Change/Find button for a few times to ensure the feature replace the right instances before I finally hit the Change All button. If error occurs, you can always undo the change(s) by Command+Z.

See, Method One is so simple and easy. And I will explain Method Two in the next post.

So You Think You Can Mac Operate – En Dash versus Hyphen

Being a pedantic old me, I always feel annoyed when I see designers use hyphens instead of en dashes such as:
1 June 2009 - 3 June 2009 or 2-4pm (annoying),
instead of:
1 June 2009 – 3 June 2009 or 2–4pm (appropriate use of en dash).

An en dash (–) is usually longer than a hyphen in length and is used to indicate a range of values such as dates, times or numbers. For example:
This display home will be open on every Sunday, 1–1.30pm. The price range is $250,000 – $285,000.

A hyphen (-) is usually used to connect words that break at the end of a line, or simply connect words to form compound words such as ice-cream, ill-natured, and run-of-the-mill. It is usually shorter in length and its shape varies from one font to another. For this occasion, I usually use en dashes instead of hyphens to represent NIL (no value) in financial tables like those in annual reports.

Some will argue that they will not risk changing clients’ copies if the clients use hyphens instead of en dashes inappropriately. However, by checking and replacing them precisely, this will not only improve the colour and texture of the body copy, but also show the mac operator or designer’s skill of accuracy and being highly attentive-to-detail. And there are a few easy tricks to perform the replacement precisely in Indesign and will discuss these in the next few posts.

Technical (Indesign) – Balance Ragged Lines

Ever wonder why you cannot put a word or two from the next line back to the end of the line above, you might have Balance Ragged Lines turned on in your Paragraph setting.

This is a handy feature to save the workload of adjusting awkward uneven lines at the end of every single paragraph (usually left aligned) in a document, especially widows. I found that it works extremely well with multi-column document layout like newsletter as the paragraphs tend to be very narrow in width and this often cause ugly flows on every column right hand sides and also widows.

To turn it on or off, bring up Paragraph Palette (Command+Option+T) and click on the palette right facing arrow then you will find the feature Balance Ragged Lines. Use this feature with care as some times it might make your paragraph too short in width compared to the rest and probably the old soft returns with our manual adjustment will be better for this occasion.