InDesign CS4 review

We look in detail at Adobe’s new interface designs on p57, but it’s worth pointing out one behavioural change that will benefit InDesign users. Not everyone likes to have their floating panel windows snap together all the time, not least because it can get confusing when panels start locking and docking into single units. InDesign CS4, like the other applications in the new suite, no longer forces this behaviour onto users, and the option to turn this off will be welcomed by many.

InDesign’s export features are as important as any layout control, and there are a couple of new items in the list of formats. Unfortunately, SVG isn’t listed and we were unable to find out what this meant for the SVG format, which is still included in Illustrator’s Save As options, but time will tell. The new IDML (InDesign Markup) export format appears in the Format list instead of CS3’s InDesign Snippet, although as it does a different job (describing the whole document in a markup language structure), it isn’t strictly a replacement.

As well as the SWF export we’ve had for a while now, InDesign CS4’s export feature now supports exporting layouts to Flash format for editing within Flash. This is, of course, the new XFL format rather than the older, native FLA variety used by previous Flash versions. That should be of no consequence if you’re working on your own or with other CS4 users, but you need to remember this if some colleagues are still using previous versions of Flash.

All native InDesign objects are exported as space-efficient Flash vector graphics, although transparency in objects or placed images require 24-bit, alpha-masked, 72ppiPNG bitmaps to be used instead. Duplicate images are detected and converted to referenced instances of a single asset. Video and audio placed into an InDesign document are exported together with the regular layout elements when using this XFL export, something that the SWF export doesn’t allow. However, the regular SWF export has been tweaked, giving you better control over the vectorisation, or rasterisation of text and support for Jpeg pass-through to avoid recompression of unmodified placed Jpeg images.

Sensibly, Adobe has decided that one typographic point in InDesign equals one pixel in Flash, so your layouts created in InDesign will look precisely the right size when opened in Flash. It’s just a shame Adobe hasn’t understood the benefit of this in Acrobat, which still scales layouts in the PDF format differently when shown at ‘100% size’ in Acrobat.

The changes in InDesign CS4 aren’t revolutionary, but they’re undoubtedly very useful. Better integration with Flash is something that has been requested ever since the Macromedia acquisition, so this is a very welcome enhancement. The feedback that can be shown while moving items around the layout is also very useful and should help you make well-aligned layouts even if you don’t remember to set up guides. The ‘slow and steady’ feel means InDesign CS4 doesn’t have quite the same pizzazz as the XPress 8 release, but this is definitely a solid update that will help a great many users.