Major Creative Cloud Update

If you have Creative Cloud you are in for a big treat. Yesterday (9:01 pm Wednesday, January 15) Adobe announced a major update for Creative Cloud members. This release is aimed especially at designers and includes new features for Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign.

New for Adobe InDesign

What designers will love in the January update for InDesign:

  • Easier access to Typekit
  • Support for EPub 3.0 with improved eBook interactivity
  • Popup footnote EPub export for those devices that support the feature
  • Smarter text handling for EPub export including color, tables, and nested styles
  • Improved handling of InDesign objects for EPub export

New for EPub Export

This release of InDesign CC is great news for those of you who create EPubs. InDesign CC now has better support for Epub 3.0 with new ways to add interactivity to eBooks. First on the list for those who have struggled with footnotes, is the support for Popup Footnotes. When you export using File > Export choose EPUB for the export format and Save. Inside the General Panel, select EPUB Version 3.0. Below, under Footnote Placement:, you can choose End of Section (Endnotes)After paragraph, or Inside a Pop-up (EPUB 3). When viewing in the iBooks application on the iPad, the footnote pops up when touched. Notice that this works only with iBooks and any device that may support the feature.

New for TypeKit

Next to the support for EPub export, my next favorite feature in this release is with the ease for accessing Typekit’s huge font library.

Using Typekit fonts is now even easier than ever. You can now connect to the Adobe Typekit font service seamlessly and use these fonts in print projects, PDF files, and more.

When you want to find the perfect type font fast, Typekit gives you access to more than $36,000 worth of desktop fonts. These now can be accessed directly from the font menus in InDesign CC and Illustrator CC.

Once you find the perfect font, you can sync it to your desktop and it will be immediately available in your font menu.

With this new capability you can forget about missing fonts. If for some reason a font shows up as missing when you open a document, InDesign CC will automatically search the Typekit desktop font library for the font and give you the option to use the fonts found, or similar ones; that is, if it finds a match.

For more on using Typekit fonts, check out Adobe’s training page at helpx.adobe.com/creative-could/learn/start/cc-add-fonts-to-desktop.html

New Simpler Hyperlinks

Creating and managing hyperlinks in InDesign CC is now faster and easier than ever. Simply control-click (right-click) on an object to open the New Hyperlink panel. This panel has also been simplified to make creating hyperlinks more intuitive.

The first hyperlink created in your document creates a character style “Hyperlinks” automatically. You can then update the individual styling for the character style as needed.

In the Hyperlinks Panel icons now give a visual indication of a hyperlink’s type or, in the case of a URL, if the link is valid. There is now a link icon to allow you to jump to the hyperlink source similar to how you work with the Links Panel. Additionally, URL hyperlinks are automatically grouped for easier access.

Getting Started

Training videos covering new features are available on Creative Cloud Learn (helpx.adobe.com/creative-cloud/learn/tutorials/indesign.html). And don’t forget to keep tuned as we will be going over each of the new EPUB features in detail with scripts to automate some of the processes.