What’s New in InDesign CC 2015 and Muse CC 2015

InDesign CC 2015 includes a number of new features and updates. InDesign users can effortlessly publish InDesign documents online. Enhancements have been made to Creative Cloud Libraries. When you place an image in a table, InDesign considers the cell an image frame. The new paragraph shading feature allows you to add colorful highlights that travel with the text on the page. Everyday tasks such as zooming, panning, and scrolling are faster thanks to performance enhancements in InDesign.

The Adobe Muse CC 2015 release brings in several exciting new features. Among the new or enhanced features are: Adobe Typekit Integration; blogs, shopping carts, and other widgets; editing hyperlinks using In-browser editing; radio button groups and other contact form enhancements; layer panel enhancements; native effects panel; auto-activated lightboxes.

Mike Pace will demonstrate and discuss all of these new and enhanced features.

Location and Parking

Park for a $3 flat rate at The Promenade and walk across the street to 6100 Center Dr. If you park in the 6100 Center Dr. lots you'll pay $1.50 for each 15 minutes.

Meeting Notes

By Alvin Takamori

If you missed the meeting of the Los Angeles InDesign User Group on July 16, you missed out on FREE pizza! This unexpected bonus was courtesy of InMotion Hosting, who opened up their office space for our meeting. Business Development/Affiliate Manager, Jason Hong explained that InMotion Hosting is a local web hosting company that has been around since 2001. So, if you have a new website that requires hosting and maintenance, and you’d like to consult with real people instead of a voice over the phone, you might consider contacting them.

As for the presentation, it featured Mike Pace, who has taught digital media for many years. He teaches visual design at Cal Poly Pomona, Mt Sierra College, and UCLA Extension. He is currently interested in interactive publications and the blurring of print and digital output.

Mike began his presentation with a good word of advice, “ Never update your software in the middle of a project.” You want to avoid changes, or even the loss of a software feature you used, affecting your work. You also don’t want to prematurely assume that a project is completed. You might publish a piece and have the client bring a couple of updates later.

In regards to software design in general, there is often a tug-of-war between features that coders like versus features designers like. For digital publishing, designers prefer features that convert their InDesign files to HTML without engaging in the coding process. This leads to a new feature in InDesign CC 2015 called Publish Online. You can select the pages you want to publish and InDesign converts the pages into a package of HTML, CSS, and Java Script and sends it to an Adobe server.

Mike then began to discuss interactive publications. A book can be published online in a rigid format as a PDF. You could push a button and simply read through the text. However, if you want to submit your application as an app, you need to add features that are more engaging like audio, video, slides and scrolling text. For this type of content you could use a standard epub format with reflowable text. This requires a special reader to translate. That reader varies depending on the output device, a Kindle, an Android or an iBook, etc. Using this format the reader can change the font style and size to suit their reading preference.

An alternative choice is a fixed epub, which the server converts to something like HTML 5 before it shows up on a viewing device. This tends to be a better choice for designers who want more control over the layout, especially if they have a publication with lots of illustrations and photos. The fixed epub preserves the page design by locking the layout design, although a viewer can zoom in and out.

Mike then touched on several things. He explained how he uses Adobe Muse to prototype what he’d like a web page to look like before handing it to coders to program it. He then demonstrated how to make a slide show using the object panel. Next he mentioned Edge Animate which creates key frame animations using HTML 5.

After that, Mike covered several new features of InDesign CC 2015. One is Paragraph Shading. You can select a section of text and have it highlighted. If you edit and add or subtract content later, as the text reflows, the shading moves with it. Another new feature is the ability to paste graphics or photos into Table cells. This process used to take several steps.

A very useful addition to InDesign is the capability of saving Styles into a Library. Now Styles can be shared, not only between InDesign documents, but with Illustrator and Photoshop too. Adobe’s goal seems to be to make InDesign the hub of design publishing.

In Adobe’s web creation software, there are a couple of changes. There are two new additions to the widget library. The first is Shopify, which is a shopping site that can be linked to a Muse website. The second is a blog widget. It’s not as fluid as a true blog site, because it’s bringing data from your blog to your Muse website.

To wrap up his discussion, Mike Pace answered some audience questions.

Farthest Attendee

The person who travels the farthest specifically to attend the meeting will receive a 6 months subscription to InDesign Magazine. Value $30.00. (We may have to check your driver's license to verify.) Winner — Christopher Sullivan

Raffle Prizes and Winners

eDocker CREATE! 6 month subscription. Value $774.00 Winner — Laurie Miller

Math Magic. 12 month subscription. $300 Winner — Thomas A. Smith

Stock Layouts. Full access to Stock Layout template library. 3 month subscription. Value $299.00 Winner — William Baughman

Markzware. Any single product. 12 month subscription. Value $199.00 Winner — Marty Romero

Expo Creative Asset Manager for Mac from Insider Software. Value $149.00 Winner — Marney Wilde

Font Agent Pro 6 from Insider Software. Value $99.95 Winner — Marney Wilde

InMotion Hosting. Web hosting and free domain. Value $90.00 Winner — Rupert Reyneke

DTP Tools Cloud for InDesign. 6 month subscription. $77.40 Winner — Wayne DeSelle

Fotolia. 3 month subscription. 5 images per month. Value $50.00 Winner — Bing Wong

O'Reilly Media. Ebook. Value to $50.00 Winner — Wayne DeSelle

TypeDNA. Font management software. Value $49.00 Winner — Marty Romero

Digital-Tutors. 1 month subscription. Value $29.00 (two raffles) Winners — William Baughman, Marty Romero

LA Web Professionals Group meeting tickets. Value $7.99 (four raffles) Winners — Bing Wong, Janel Reyneke, Rupert Reyneke

About the Presenter

Mike Pace

Mike Pace has taught digital media for over 20 years. HIs current interests lie in the burgeoning realm of interactive publications and the blurring of the gap between print and digital output, and stemming from this, the ever increasing need for multichannel  publishing. Adobe InDesign is primarily used to create the output that can be parsed for print, web, epubs and  DPS apps. He obtained his graduate degree from the Durban University of Technology, South Africa, where he grew up. Currently, he teaches visual design at Cal Poly Pomona, Mt. Sierra College and UCLA Extension.