Tips to help a Quark user learn InDesign

I will mention some of the hugest problems that QX-changer have:

1. Character Styles: In InDesign use Characters Styles only for exceptions, they are not completely defined. If you make a style with red, you need only make one single style with color definition red and apply it on every kind of paragraph style.
2. Paragraph Styles: In InDesign, a normal Paragraph Style does not use a Character Style. A character style is used inside a paragraph style according to predefined rules, like GREP style, nested style, automatic numbers and bullets, first letter, etc.
3. Layers: InDesign uses layers everywhere, also on masters. It is important to work with them everywhere.
4. Text wrapping: It is not influenced (by default) by the order of objects, but of the property of the objects in the section text wrapping and for text in text frame options, ignore text wrapping.
5. Text frames on masters: Don't create text frames on masters, except for stationaries like header and page numbers. New text frames will run in automatically alongside the page borders. Only primary text frames are allowed for content on the master, but these are only useful in book typesetting.
6. Page Margins: Use the page margins, align everything on them as it helps later to use Layout Adjustment.
7. Masters: Create them hierarchically. You can make a new master based on another one as you can do with any page.
8. Language: Language is a character property and not a whole paragraph property. You can use Character Styles for foreign words.
9. Typographical Quotations: They are not defined document or program-wide for every language the same, every language picks the correct quotation from the presets of the program according the language specific settings.
10. …

This book is old, but it might still be useful, and you can get it for a good price because of the date.

Moving to InDesign: Use What You Know About QuarkXPress and PageMaker to Get Up to Speed in InDesign Fast!

by David Blatner, Christopher Smith

https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0321294114/ref=dp_olp_all_mbc?ie=UTF8&condition=all

I keep it on my bookshelf.

I work in both. Other than the typical recommendations for using Lynda.com to learn general things, I would say your time would be best spent before you need to do the client work by just recreating a couple projects in ID. What you will need to learn is specifically what was done before in Q and will have better correlation than just general learning without a real life application.

And there is always here to ask questions that are specific to your needs. There are people around the world here, so most any question will not languish too long.

Mike

(I remember your user name from the Q forum...)

lynda.com is a great place to get up to speed on ID moving from Quark. Even Bob has courses on there. It's worth the trial and money well spent.

InDesign - Online Courses, Classes, Training, Tutorials on Lynda

Way too open ended to give you specific advice so it would be best to ask more detailed questions.

One thing I will point out is that master pages are completely different. In InDesign everything on a master is unselectable on a live page though these items can be overridden. This seems to be the big stumbling block for Quark users.