Introduction to Adobe InDesign

InDesign has come a long way in a very short time. The original purpose of InDesign was to different create documents for print. This could be something as basic as a business card, post card mailer, flyer, or as complex as a magazine or book.

In the last couple of revisions, InDesign has gained a lot more power. It is now attempting to be a tool for producing all of the types of media you may want to publish to. This includes the Web, as well as some basic animation. InDesign has the ability to create interactive documents, which respond to the user as they fill in the requested information.

All of the applications in the Adobe Creative Suite are beginning to overlap. InDesign can be used to do all of the above, but it's abilities are still rather limited. To do anything beyond basic tasks, you are still better off using the proper applications for each task, such as Dreamweaver for Web development, and Flash for Animation.

In this class, we will focus mainly on the document creation aspects of InDesign. If you choose to explore the other features of InDesign, you may also want to make yourself aware of some of the pitfalls of those technologies, such as lack of support in certain devices, etc..

From the Start Menu, in the lower left corner of your screen, select 'All Programs'. From that menu, locate Adobe Creative Suite, and click on it. This should expand to reveal the Adobe software collection. Click on Adobe InDesign.

Once InDesign is loaded, we can create a new document. We are not really concerned with the document itself right now. We are more interested in touring the standard screen layout, and some of the tools on InDesign..

From the Splash Screen, select Document. If there is no splash screen, click on the File menu, and select New -> Document.

The dialog box that opens allows us to configure the type of document we are creating. We will skip this for now, and just accept all of the default values. Click OK.

• Pre-defined Workspaces - resetting the appearance.
• Menu Bar
• Control Panel
• Context Sensitive
• Tools Panel
• Pasteboard
• Page
• Panel Docking Area

• Tutorials
• Searching Help
• Cheat Sheets on the Tools, Panels, and Keyboard Shortcuts