Adobe® InDesign® CS4 Styles: How to Create Better, Faster Text and Layouts

Adobe® InDesign® CS4 Styles: How to Create Better, Faster Text and Layouts

Released April 2009
Publisher(s): Adobe Press
ISBN: 9780321637840

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Book description

Tap into the far-reaching potential of InDesign styles—from simple drop cap formatting to cross-media export to XHTML. Styles have the power to transform how design and production professionals approach and accomplish any project. Adopting a style-centric workflow can reduce tasks that would normally take days to mere hours, and tasks that would take hours to minutes or even seconds. Less time spent on repetitive tasks means more time for creating your best work.

This book explores every InDesign style to reveal its full potential. Throughout each chapter, you’ll pick up many tips and best practices gleaned from real-world experience. Two bonus chapters, “Stroke Styles” and “Project Planning with Styles in Mind” are available for download.

For “figure it out as I go” designers, embracing styles still allow you to work intuitively on the page. And this guide helps break preconceptions and bad habits transferred from less powerful page layout applications that keep new InDesign users from working in far more satisfying and productive ways.

Where InDesign is concerned, styles truly do equal substance.

Table of contents

  1. Copyright
    1. Dedication
  2. Acknowledgments
  3. Introduction
    1. Why Styles Matter
    2. About This Book
  4. 1. Text Styles
    1. 1. The Fundamentals: Paragraph and Character Styles
      1. Character Style Attributes
        1. Basic Character Formats
        2. Advanced Character Formats
        3. OpenType Features
        4. Underline and Strikethrough Options
      2. Paragraph Style Attributes
        1. General Options
        2. Indents and Spacing
        3. Paragraph Rules
        4. Keep Options
        5. Hyphenation
        6. Justification
        7. Drop Caps and Nested Styles
          1. Drop caps
          2. Nested Styles
          3. Nested Line Styles
        8. GREP Style
        9. Bullets and Numbering
      3. Working with Paragraph and Character Styles
        1. The Paragraph Styles and Character Styles Panels
        2. Creating Paragraph Styles
        3. Applying Paragraph Styles
        4. Modifying Paragraph Styles
        5. Creating Character Styles
        6. Applying Character Styles
        7. Modifying Character Styles
        8. Disassociating Text from a Style
        9. Duplicating Styles
        10. Deleting Styles
        11. Finding and Removing Unused Styles
        12. Importing Text Styles from other Documents
    2. 2. Nesting and Sequencing Styles
      1. Nested Styles
        1. The Nested Styles Work Area
        2. Anatomy of Nested Styles
        3. The Downside of Nesting Styles
      2. Advanced Nesting Techniques
        1. Nesting at the End of a Paragraph
        2. Using Multiple Delimiters
        3. Repeating Nested Styles in a Loop
      3. Nested Line Styles
      4. Paragraph Styles in Sequence: The Next Style Option
        1. Applying Styles in Sequence
        2. Repeating a Sequence of Paragraph Styles
      5. Establishing Relationships: Based-on Styles
        1. Basing One Style on Another
        2. Resetting a Style to its Base
    3. 3. Automatic Styling with GREP
      1. GREP Styles vs. Nested Styles
      2. Metacharacters
        1. What Makes a GREP Metacharacter?
        2. Metacharacter Types
          1. Wildcards
          2. Repeat metacharacters
          3. Location metacharacters
          4. Match criteria
          5. Modifiers
          6. Posix
        3. Remembering Metacharacters
      3. Creating a GREP Style
      4. Defining Expressions for GREP Styles
        1. Specific Words or Names
        2. Prices
        3. Figure References in Parentheses
        4. E-Mail Addresses
        5. Find and Format Fractions
        6. U.S. Phone Numbers
    4. 4. Auto-styling Imported Word and Excel Files
      1. Working with Word Files
        1. Word Import Options
          1. Importing Word styles automatically
          2. Customizing Word style import
        2. Saving Word Import Options as Presets
        3. Maintaining Links to Word Files
        4. Getting InDesign Styles into Word
      2. Working with Excel Files
        1. Mapping Spreadsheets to Styles
  5. 2. Styles Beyond Text
    1. 5. Object Styles
      1. One-stop Shopping for Attributes
        1. What Object Styles Can Do
        2. What Object Styles Can’t Do
      2. Default Object Styles
        1. Assigning Default Object Styles
      3. Similarities Between Object Styles and Text Styles
      4. Differences Between Object Styles and Text Styles
        1. Selective Attribute Inclusion
        2. Override Removal
      5. Combining Paragraph Styles and Object Styles
      6. Flexible Object Styles Every InDesign User Should Have
        1. Auto-Fit Frames
        2. Preferred Text Wrap Options
        3. Subtle Drop Shadows
        4. Pre-Anchored Anchored Objects
        5. Converting Flexible Object Styles
    2. 6. Table and Cell Styles
      1. Table Styling
      2. Table Styles vs. Cell Styles
        1. Cell Styles
          1. Cell Style General options
          2. Cell Style Text options
          3. Cell Style Stroke and Fill options
          4. Cell Style Diagonal Line options
        2. Table Styles
          1. Basic Table style
          2. Table Style General options
          3. Table Style Table Setup options
          4. Table Style Row and Column Stroke options
          5. Table Style Fill options
      3. Working with Table Style Limitations
      4. Maintaining Links and Updating Tables
        1. Importing Excel Spreadsheets
          1. Updating the linked file
        2. Copying and Pasting New Table Data
  6. 3. Combining Styles With Other Features
    1. 7. Drop Caps, Bullets, and Numbering
      1. Drop Caps
        1. Drop Cap Options
      2. Bullets and Numbering
        1. Bulleted Lists
          1. Bullet character
          2. Aligning Bullets
        2. Numbered Lists
          1. Defining a numbered list
          2. Multilevel lists
          3. Numbering Style options
          4. Bullet or Number Position
          5. Numbering across stories and documents
          6. Styles as list managers
    2. 8. Advanced Find/Change with Styles
      1. Finding and Changing Text Styles
        1. Including Styles in Find/Change Queries
        2. How Style Attributes Affect Find/Change Behavior
      2. GREP Find/Change vs. GREP Styles
      3. Saving Queries
      4. Advanced Style-based Search Techniques
        1. Searching for Paragraph and Character Styles Simultaneously
        2. Style Cleanup
        3. Unnesting Nested Styles
        4. Inserting Anchored Objects with Find/Change
      5. Find/Change for Objects
    3. 9. Generating Dynamic Content with Styles
      1. Tables of Contents
        1. Planning a Table of Contents
        2. Creating a Table of Contents
        3. Styling TOC Entries
        4. Modifying a Table of Contents
        5. Updating a Table of Contents
      2. Running Header Text Variables
        1. Creating Running Header Variables
        2. Inserting a Running Header Text Variable
        3. Formatting a Variable
      3. Cross-references
        1. What Makes Up a Cross-Reference?
        2. Cross-References and Styles
        3. Creating a Cross-Reference
        4. Formatting a Cross-Reference
        5. Building a Custom Cross-Reference Format
        6. Styling a Cross-Reference
        7. Inserting Additional Cross-References
        8. Tips For Working With Cross-References
    4. 10. Styles, CSS, and XML
      1. Export for Dreamweaver
        1. General Options
        2. Image Options
        3. Advanced Options
          1. CSS Options
        4. Creating Web-aware Layouts
        5. Defining CSS Rules
        6. Glass Ceilings and Brick Walls
      2. Styles and XML
        1. Exporting XML
      3. Importing XML
      4. XSLT: Styles on Steroids
    5. 11. Style Management
      1. Style Organization Basics
      2. Style Groups
        1. Style Duplication
        2. Exporting Grouped Styles
          1. RTF export
          2. HTML export
      3. Quick Apply
      4. Managing Styles Across Documents
        1. The Book Panel as Style Manager
          1. Creating a book
          2. Adding documents to a book
          3. Disabling auto numbering
          4. Selecting a style source
          5. Choosing synchronization options
          6. Synchronizing the book
    6. 12. Stroke Styles
      1. Creating New Stroke Styles
        1. Dash Stroke Styles
        2. Dotted Stroke Styles
        3. Stripe Stroke Styles
      2. Saving Stroke Styles
      3. Modifying and Deleting Stroke Styles
      4. Sharing Stroke Styles
      5. Stroke Style Easter Eggs
    7. 13. Planning Projects with Styles in Mind
      1. Style Triage
        1. Assess Your Content
        2. Plan Your Styles
        3. Break It Down
      2. Creating “Undefined” Styles
      3. Power-apply Your Styles
      4. Redefine, Redefine, Redefine

Product information

  • Title: Adobe® InDesign® CS4 Styles: How to Create Better, Faster Text and Layouts
  • Author(s):
  • Release date: April 2009
  • Publisher(s): Adobe Press
  • ISBN: 9780321637840