Anchored Objects, Tables, Magnified Text Frames, and Powerful Scripts

Sound familiar? If not, then you missed this month’s InDesign Magazine.

InDesign Magazine No. 8

In the October/November issue (issue no. 8) the legendary David Blatner reveals a hidden technique to automatically scale the point size of type as you resize text frames in the InStep article, “Make a Magnifying Text Frame.”

Confused by the new InDesign CS2 anchored objects? You aren’t the only one. Well, shiver ye timbers no more, matey. In an amusing (or annoying, you be the judge) InStep article, “Drop Anchor,” yours truly demystifies the least understood new feature of CS2. If you work in longer documents like proposals, books, magazines, or catalogs, you need to understand anchored objects—for your own sanity. They will save you more time and trouble than even Quick Apply.

Tables. You know everything you need to know about tables in InDesign CS2, right? Sure—you use them only occassionally, tab delimitated text goes in, you set alternating row colors, and you’re done. Right? Well, not quite. Tables, as Diane Burns points out, can be used for much more than tabular data. Don’t believe me? Check it out: Creativepro.com has excerpted the entire article in “InDesign How-To: Solve Layout Dilemmas with Tables.”

Even though you can get the lowdown on tables as page structure elements above, don’t stop there or you’ll miss Thomas Nielsen, InDesign’s director of engineering, hinting about the future of InDesign, beginning with InDesign CS3. And you’ll miss reviews of PatternMaker and PatternPack 1.1, Cross-Talk for InCopy, FlightCheck Studio for Adobe InDesign, and more.

(Disclaimer: I’m not compensated in anyway for encouraging you to read InDesign Magazine. I do it because it’s a great magazine that every InDesign user should devour. Well, that and because Terri and David laugh at my jokes.)