Discussion: InDesign problems and innovations...

[amaarora]

Hi community members,

As users of InDesign and other lay-outing tools, I want to ask you some questions:

• What is new in the world of document layouting? Something innovative? For example: Gridifying based on page dimensions
• What problems are faced in the domain of typography that you think must be solved? For example: #Fontphoria: Adobe MAX 2018 (Sneak Peek) | Adobe Creative Cloud - YouTube
• Any smart solutions or workflows you want in the product that can ease work? For example: replacing all missing glyphs in a document in one click
• Anything out of the box workflows? For example: Automatically applying fonts to a document based on context...
• Anything which you feel sounds cool and amazing and is useful?
• Something which other tools do but not InDesign? For example: Messages in iOS 10: How to Use Emoji Replacement and Prediction - MacRumors

Above are just pointers i can think of right now. Would love to hear more such ideas, hurdles and other opinions... I also found one such innovative idea here: Dynamic baseline related unit of measurement – Adobe InDesign Feedback

FYI: The idea is not define the InDesign roadmap or mention bugs. We have a seperate page for that: Adobe InDesign Feedback .

The sole purpose of asking this here, is to gain understanding and knowledge regarding what concerns are facing our customers and  knowing the innovations they want in the product. (something like InDesign CC 2019 new feature - Content-Aware Fit - YouTube )

Please feel free to express your idea even if it is totally weird at its core

Thanks,

Aman

[Eugene Tyson]

Good thoughts in there - not sure what to make of it except that InDesign does a job that it's supposed to do - but that's all it does and all it's ever done, bar a few needlessly added interactive/flash/swf epub genericisms.

Anyway - we do all agree that it needs to be rebuilt - but how practical is that?

From a development point of view, I read an article by Michael Ninness (sp.), and it was quite clear of Adobe's approach to making changes to InDesign.

From CS5 circa 2010 (NINE YEARS AGO)

https://indesignsecrets.com/michael-ninness-answers-indesign-cs5-critics.php

Quote 1:

Rather than going on somewhat arbitrary customer visits and asking them what they want us to add to the product, we instead present to them what we plan on building upfront, before we’ve written a single line of code. We show them mock-ups and prototypes and explain what the features do. We then ask them a very simple but important question: If the product we just showed them were available tomorrow, would they buy it (or upgrade)? If their answer is no, we ask them what we would need to remove or add to the feature list to change their minds.

Straight off the bat - the guy says that they don't ask what features people want - they show them features that they could sell them.

Basically saying that they don't get user feedback at all!

The next paragraph is telling

Quote 2:

The point of the exercise is to end up with a list of features that add up to a balanced product release that provides value to all the key stakeholders that make up the purchase decision.

They are going to Key Stakeholders and selling them products they have dreamt up to make more sales - they are not going to ground level and find out what needs to be better (see quote 1)

Quote 3:

One key aspect of the customer visits is that whenever possible, when we visited a particular customer site that all the key decision makers were in the room.

This is also extremely worrying - key decision-makers often don't work with the software, they are CEO's, Managers, etc. and we are talking about "key stakeholders" (see quote 2) which is worrying - as they are visiting "Customers" who have bought vast copies of InDesign, and appeasing their concerns to sell more product.

Quote 4:

That is when we asked them what features we had just showed them stood out, and then asked them why. After that, we asked them to prioritize the list of features we had just walked them through.

Again, saying they pitched them features, asked them which was their favourite and ran with it!

In no particular order, here is the list of features we pitched during all of the customer visits:

Here's the list they pitched:

• Simplified Transformations
• The Gap Tool
• Live Corner Effects
• Copyfitting
• A Layers panel like Illustrator’s
• Paragraphs that Span Columns
• Multiple Page Sizes
• Interactive Documents & Presentations
• Handoff to Flash Professional
• HTML authoring
• CS Review
• Track text changes
• Synchronized settings
• Table improvements

Simplified Transformations - what does even mean?

Gap tool - never use it

Live corner effects - useful

Copyfitting - ???

Layers panel like illustrator???

Paragraphs that span columns (useful but slow and not updated since)

Multiple Page sizes (useful but not updated)

Interactive Documents & Presentations (ok I'm sure people find this useful, but not for me)

Handoff to Flash Professional (DEAD IN THE WATER)

HTML Authoring (DEAD IN THE WATER)

CS Review (DEAD IN THE WATER)

Track text changes (useful but I have never ever used it - never been updated either)

Sychronised settings (useful but can be problematic)

Table improvements (only thing I remember is being able to move a row/column)

Here's the list they didn't pitch but showed them anyway

• Kern Pair Editor
• Camera Raw Import
• Footnote improvements
• Endnotes
• Non-destructive image enhancement (Curves, Levels, Hue/Sat, etc.)
• Content aware scaling of placed images
• Layer groups
• Paragraph shading
• Linked (external) style sheets
• Soft-Bottom text frames
• Color swatch groups

Kern Pair editor (sure they knew what this was!)

Camera Raw Import (sure they knew what this was!)

Footnotes improvements (still waiting)

Endnotes (there now but very limited)

Non-destructive image enhancement (Curves, Levels, Hue/Sat, etc.) - (still waiting as is everyone else - again sure they knew what this was!)

Content aware scaling of placed images (sure they knew what this was! IN INDesign now - but I find it useless and it's not scaling )

Layer groups - (however, they asked if they wanted layers like Illustrator???

Paragraph shading (it's here now)

Linked external style sheets (still waiting)

Soft bottom text frames (what???)

Colour swatch groups (still waiting)

Ok the main part of that exercise - in the proposed portion - all very exciting groundbreaking things - things that sell - in the other group - it's confusing and I'm sure they didn't care about them after hearing what they could have won!

Quote 5:

For us, the most surprising thing we learned during the visits was how InDesign was being used to create presentations by every customer/company we visited. Right away, in the very first two visits, within the first ten minutes of the meetings, someone would mention how they wished InDesign would export a PowerPoint file.

This goes back to the team only visiting Key Stakeholders, and Key Decision Makers - and not talking to the teams on the ground.

Any seasoned designer that can use InDesign can sure as hell transpose their designs to Powerpoint (I DO IT ALL THE TIME).

Plus PDF to Powerpoint is pretty simple - goes to show - not the right people in the room

Quote 6:

They weren’t talking about the standard bullet-point type presentations that first come to mind when you think of PowerPoint. In many cases, they were using InDesign to layout their project proposals and mood boards. Of course, they were actually creating their content in Photoshop and Illustrator and then laying out the presentation in InDesign to present to their clients.

Ah, now we are getting to the main point - they weren't even using InDesign.

They could have taken their content from PS and Illustrator and put that directly to powerpoint if that's what they wanted - again, goes to show, wrong people in the room.

Quote 7:

It became clear very quickly how little InDesign users know about the capabilities of interactive PDFs, and using full screen PDFs as a presentation format. But even if they were aware of interactive PDFs, that format wouldn’t support the additional capabilities they were hoping to take advantage of.

Not surprisingly - interactive documents & presentations came top of the list!

Quote 8:

When all customer visits were completed and the dust settled, here is how the individual features we pitched (and those we didn’t) ended up being prioritized by the participants:

1. Interactive Documents & Presentations
2. CS Review
3. Multiple Page Sizes
4. Simplified Transformations
5. Live Corner Effects
6. Handoff to Flash Professional
7. The Gap Tool
8. Layers Panel like Illustrator
9. Track Text Changes
10. Paragraphs that Span Columns

Quote 9:

So, what did this whole experience tell us? Our customers not only gave us permission to evolve InDesign into a layout and design tool for more media than just Print, they outright pleaded for us to do so.

I disagree - I just think they pushed ideas onto people who are Key Decision makers - and Key Stakeholders, and this in turn ended up being the wrong people. They might have had the Head of a Company in a room - but they didn't have the guy doing the 9-5 - or did they?

(David Blatner) DB: There are some InDesign users who say that InDesign should only focus on being a tool for Print, that adding features for authoring Flash content is just a bunch of hype and is a sign that Adobe doesn’t care much about Print anymore. How do you respond to those thoughts?

That interview was conducted in 2010 - NINE YEARS AGO.

And we are still asking the same question, does Adobe care much about Print???

[JamieMcKee]

Yeah, Michael took me to task back then for wanting InDesign to focus on print. He wanted InDesign to be the premiere product for just developing content. The problem is, when you introduce new features for developing content, but never come back to them to refine, reiterate, and perfect, you just end up with garbage. Many of the things introduce in the CS5/CS5.5 era are obsolete (Handoff to Flash, HTML authoring, CS Review) or have languished for so long, they're maddening to use, as Bob Levine will tell you (Interactive Documents and Presentations). Maybe I'm alone in feeling this way, but I'd still rather use a more narrowly focused product that does what it does exceptionally well than a product that tries to do everything but doesn't do any of it exceptionally well.

[BobLevine]

I can assure you that you are not alone! And the silence coming from the powers that be over this is deafening.

Again, it's inexcusable.

[Document Geek]

• Ability to export notes as PDF comments. The new PDF comments feature only goes one way (when importing). And it's wonky and doesn't work well.
• When exporting a PDF from the book panel, the PDF type defaults back to the type used when exporting from the File > Export menu. The different PDF export areas should be independent of each other.
• In the Stroke styles dialog box, stroke weights are tied to the Document Units of measurement, not the Stroke unit of measurement (as set in Preferences)
• I'd love to see conditional text that can be manually reordered. Right now, it's ordered by alphanumeric only.
• Ditto on the Text Variables that get squished.
• Ability to change missing fonts in hidden conditional text.
• The Notes panel is really in need of improvement. I'd like to see XML incorporated into annotations so that the resulting PDFs can have various types of annotations, not just sticky notes (which currently requires a third party plugin). I write about that here: Document Geek: My Wish List for Notes in Adobe InDesign
• Get rid of Hover Scrolling! Or give us the option to turn it off. It's been messing up my workflow since it was introduced in 2013.

Some of these I've posted to the UserVoice site, but I am reposting them here because they are out-of-the-box workflow which would greatly improve my ability to work with InDesign. Improving PDF Comments/Notes is probably top of my list of desired features. I don't use any of Adobe's recent additions to this area (either in Acrobat or in InDesign). I came up with my own solutions that are more full-fledged and reliable.

[Barb Binder]

Hi Aman:

I forgot to add my support for better form fields properties. We have a good start, but there are many properties that can only be changed in Acrobat, which are wiped out when we re-export the PDF. And JonathanArias​ pointed out recently that form fields options could—but are not—part of object styles. Yet.

~Barb

[SJRiegel]

One feature enhancement I would love (that I realize may be completely unworkable for coding reasons).

I'd like a Find/Change and Spell Check option inside the Index Panel.

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

This is not an exhaustive list (and some is repetitive), but here are the ones that come to mind.

Rather than repeating everything previously posted, I'll just add easier creation and exporting if interactive documents, especially to HTML5. Shouldn't need a third-party plugin to get good output.

Long document features (some not updated since CS3--12 years ago!)

• Graphics
  • Fix runaround with anchored graphic for previous text flow (2-col layout with straddled graphic anchored in 2nd col.)
  • Dynamic Link to Photoshop to edit images directly in ID without switching over to PS (with layer styles)
  • Dynamic Link to Acrobat to edit PDFs directly in ID (with option to save a copy and replace with edited version)
  • Easier anchoring of multiple objects (such as graphic with caption--see below)
  • "Add a caption box" option to graphics (defaults to width of graphic, used predefined format--maybe an Object styles
• Tables
  • Option to remember table geometry (at least table and col width) in Table Styles
  • Conditional table rows (possibly columns)
  • Table footnotes (that show at bottom of noted text on multi-page tables, not at end of table)
  • Excel linkage option upon import rather than under Preferences
  • Table style auto-assigns header rows to incoming Excel document (rather than all body rows)
• Workflow
  • Text insets as in FrameMaker (or InCopy insets, but can be inserted inline with other text but maintain link)
  • Book folders and groups as in FrameMaker (although I would reverse how they are used: groups for multiple documents in same chapter; folders for organization)
  • Ability to turn off multiple undo's temporarily (was a big drag on system with doing InData text flow with inline graphics--I suspect is was recording each entry as an undo)
  • Easier Print Booklet to PDF option
  • Per-page layer option (split Layer panel into two sections--per document and per layer?)
  • Per-page view option for facing page documents
  • More XML features as in FrameMaker (fix it or drop it...)
• Text
  • Track format changes in addition to text edits
  • Leading proportional to type size (like Quark--+2 or +10%)
  • Endnotes for entire book, not just per chapter
  • Wrapping text variables
  • Character styles in variables
  • "TOC" list based on character styles
  • Multiple indices
  • Easier option to right-align auto-numbering (so 1, 10, 100 align on right, not left)
• InCopy
  • Option to prevent manual text reformatting

[davidblatner]

Wow, this thread is fascinating… some great ideas + an enormous steaming heap of complaining and cynical philosophizing. Of course, complaining has its place, I suppose, but holy moley…

Just a few points that need to be made:

• On the question of how should the developers decide what to do: They have been very clear that they a) watch https://InDesign.UserVoice.com carefully; b) read prerelease; c) talk to large customers; and d) watch industry trends and try to innovate.
• Eugene whinges at some length about a comment from 9 years ago, without understanding a number of the important features discussed, and then equates this with how the InDesign team is run today. Makes no sense at all.
• "A developer" says InDesign has been "put out to pasture," apparently ignoring the many, many new features and improvements that the team has made in the past 3 years.

Look, I want InDesign to be better/stronger/cooler as much as anyone here, but whining like a preteen doesn't help at all.

To Barb, Kelly, Jane, Dave, and everyone else here who is providing constructive criticism with great ideas: THANK YOU! Love reading these.

It's fun to think of how InDesign could be better, provide good background so the developers understand it… but please also make sure these ideas are collected and voted for on uservoice!

[Pickory]

TechComm @ Adobe on Twitter: "#Framemaker (2019 Release) Vs. Indesign CC for Technical Documentation...

Interesting.

[BobLevine]

I don't think that's a completely fair assessment, David. Many of us have been patient and asking over and over again for some attention to paid to older features and things as needed as UI Scaling. Those requests haven't even been met with an explanation-just dead silence, so yeah, I'm complaining and I'm not likely to stop, either.

Every time I take on a new project, especially for an interactive document, I know I'm going to be spending hours if not days of extra time because of the archaic tools we're stuck with.

[Pickory]

Hi Bob,

Use better tools.

Read your own stuff, on this.

All the best.

P.

[davidblatner]

Bob, I know I sounded harsh, but jeez, just read over these comments above… You keep talking about silence from the InDesign team, but where are you listening? Just here on the forums?

Adobe sent over 20 engineers and managers to The InDesign Conference at CreativePro Week this year. (Not all InDesign… Illustrator, Photoshop, and other products, too.) They were listening carefully, taking notes, and talking a lot! They set up dozens of 1:1 and small group meetings.

We all know that Adobe is not giving the InDesign team enough resources. That's not going to change anytime soon (unless they change the name of the product to InDesignXD). And so the team needs to use its scarce resources carefully. Yes, we've all heard you go on about how we don't need any new features and how they should just fix old ones. And we've all heard people demand lots of new features. Don't you think the obvious choice is to find compromise? As far as I can tell, that's exactly what they're doing. Unfortunately, compromise means that everyone is left dissatisfied. But the answer to that isn't to complain and stomp your feet.

The answer is to keep asking, keep making your arguments and points, back them up, stay patient, and trust that everyone is trying to do their best in challenging circumstances.

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

RE: We all know that Adobe is not giving the InDesign team enough resources.

An interesting follow-up question is "why not?". Looking at all the CC programs, one wonders where ID's place in the funding is located. I would think it would be up there. (I'd hate to be on the Dreamweaver team!)

Adobe does have a tendency to get distracted by "shinny things". (Actually, I know they are trying to predict what users will want next, which in today's environment, is a moving target.)

BTW, the Adobe engineers did a similar thing at AdobeMAX last year. Very useful input from ACPs.

[Eugene Tyson]

davidblatner  wrote

• Eugene whinges at some length about a comment from 9 years ago, without understanding a number of the important features discussed, and then equates this with how the InDesign team is run today. Makes no sense at all.

That's completely unfair - I only summarised an interview from 9 years ago - which this thread instantly reminded me of - and I was replying directly to "A developer".

I was musing on the interview from years ago - my comments in the blog post that I made 9 years ago, are the same feelings I have now.

I never equated that is how the InDesign team is run today - I asked the question!

I haven't seen any groundbreaking updates in the last 9 years! Nothing, there are still pieces of InDesign that were added on a whim from meetings with Key Stakeholders, and these items were never updated and now obsolete.

Other features that are desperately in need of updating and refreshing, making better were left to 'rot', as pointed out by many other ACPs on the forum here, not just me 'whinging', David. And other features were added which in turn were also neglected, and these were in course with meetings with Key Stakeholders and Key Decision Makers... and many of those features from 9 years ago - and once again I will say are now fully obsolete.

Which brings me back to the question - in 9 years why haven't we gotten a significant update on key features that are continually requested.

I hope this finds you well David, you are a brilliant teacher of InDesign, and I am a long time fan of InDesignSecrets - and I certainly hope that this does not come across as whinging.

For those that don't know, David and Anne Marie on InDesignSecrets are the most helpful people I have ever come across. I came across their blog in about 2006, and learned everything to do with InDesign from them both. No matter what question I had, or what problem I couldn't solve, they were there to help me every step of the way.

I am eternally grateful to InDesignSecrets, David, Anne Marie, and Mike Rankin - their continued support and their blog are an inspiration.

Kind regards

Eugene

[Derek Cross]

Hi Eugene

I heartily endorse your last couple of paragraphs – David, AM and Mike have changed the way we approach InDesign, what would we do without them!

Derek

[Eugene Tyson]

By the way - did you read the first list I posted in this thread.  I felt it was very constructive,  non-preteeny, and non-whingy.

As it goes with a forum - the conversation can develop, heated feelings come out, and frustration sets in, and constructive ideas can be born from a healthy, frustrated, heated feelings, debate.

All the information in this thread is GOLD material for the InDesign team.

I also think that InDesign User Voice should be (or at least the entire User Voice) areas should be far more accessible.

I love them - but I often forget they even exist.

I will definitely endeavor to promote this as much as I can.

[davidblatner]

Eugene, I apologize for not having read your earlier post… just did, and it is full of excellent ideas! Thank you, too, for your kind words about my work and the site. I'm sorry that my comment (about your later post) was overly sharp, but I do feel that you (and some other here) are being pretty harsh to the InDesign team. I don't mean to be an apologist for them, and I want to keep the pressure on them, too! But I don't think it's fair to lambast them for how they make decisions or the features they choose to work on.

Some of the features you list (from back in CS5) were extremely powerful. For example, what they were calling "soft-bottom frames" back then is now called "Auto-Size" (in the Text Frame Options dialog box).

We all want more (I personally have a list several pages long of features I want in InDesign, many of which I've been asking about for literally 15 years). But I don't think it's true to say we haven't seen anything important recently. True, the first 3 or 4 years of CC was pretty sparse. And true, there has been nothing truly groundbreaking. But there have been some great new features.

James Wamser maintains a wonderful document showing all the new features, per version: https://indesignsecrets.com/indesign-new-features-guide-updated-for-cc-2019.php

From that, I see: Publish Online, CC Libraries, Paragraph Shading and Borders, end notes, object style size/position, pdf comment import…

By the way, I think there are five reasons why it seems like there hasn't been a lot of change in InDesign:

• There was a surprisingly large amount of work done on under-the-hood changes and user interface changes over the past 6 years. Some of that was necessary and some was self-inflicted (such as Adobe kept changing the UI and InDesign had to "keep up").
• There was a lot of turnover in product management, which was unfortunate but may have been inevitable as InDesign development was moved to their India office. It's been nice to see things "settling in" more, where there's more consistency and focus over the past year or two. This product needs long-term consistency and focus.
• The product is, of course, already reasonably mature. That means each year it becomes harder to "teach an old dog new tricks." I remember talking to Douglas Waterfall 8 or 9 years ago about a feature he was working on—I think footnotes. He started to explain the complexities, and I realized that a problem that I thought would be pretty simple ("just throw them at the bottom of the frame!") was actually mind-blowingly difficult to solve. He spent over 6 months just trying to crack the puzzle of how to architect this one change (which then took even more time to actually implement).
• The users/customers want more and more diverse things. (Bob wants them to do interactive features; Eugene wants print production and long doc improvements… the more users, the more directions the team is pulled. So the result is that we just get a little of this and a little of that.
• A lot of work has been done on background systems that aren't necessarily direct feature improvements in InDesign: publish online, creative cloud libraries, typekit/adobe fonts, adobe stock. While many of us might question the need to do these, we have to remember that ever since Creative Suite launched, InDesign has been part of a much larger ecosystem.

Let's keep pushing for improvements to our favorite app! But I vote we keep it positive and constructive.

[BobLevine]

I just want to be clear about something, too.

My beef is with folks with a far higher paygrade than the engineers and project managers. They’ve clearly been given lemons and are making excellent lemonade out of it.

[Colin Flashman]

In answer to the original post by amaarora, I think a lot of what is being asked for could be found in the indesign.uservoice.com suggestions – as at the time of writing this post, there are over 2340 suggestions, and I agree with the top 5 (Option to split table rows across pages, MathML Support, SVG import, Make text variables/live captions breakable like normal text, Locate where a specific colour is used in your document). That said, I won't parrot the other suggestions that I agree with, needless to say the uservoice site would be a great place to start.

Other ideas that have cropped up recently (at least in this office) have been:

• Grammar checker similar to Grammarly;
• Open PDFs natively in InDesign;
• Autoformat feature similar to the Microsoft Word autoformat feature;
• Be able to see a "rendered" preview much like RIP software such as AGFA Apogee or Fuji XMF can display;
• A "consistency" checker. For example, a feature to check consistency of a document for how dates are written, how addresses are written, how people's names appear, how post-nominals appear etc.

I don't necessarily agree with Eugene Tyson's comment of "there are lots of functions added to indesign over the years that are no longer viable and should be removed" as this may apply to what he is doing, but not what everyone is doing – an example of this is when Acrobat removed features they felt weren't being used, only to have backlash from the community complaining that the removed features had in fact been used. I do agree that there are features that I don't use and have probably been deprecated elsewhere.

[Eugene Tyson]

BobLevine​

I 100% agree! That is exactly where my beef is at too.