InDesign is the central application in Adobe’s publishing vision, taking text and images and combining them as multiple page publications ready for output on paper and screen.

As such, efficiency is key, and InDesign CS4 benefits from all the latest CS4 interface enhancements. It has a Workspace switcher, application bar, self-adjusting panels, tabbed documents, and tiled windows. You can even tile the Story Editor text view next to the layout view.

And as you work on your publication, you’ll benefit from other dedicated interface enhancements such as hardware-accelerated zoom and the ability to rotate spreads to work on angled text.

Particularly useful are the new Smart Cursor, which gives onscreen feedback on object transformations, and Smart Guides, which constantly check all objects in the current view to help you create consistent sizing and positioning.

The biggest interface improvement, however, is the complete reworking of the Links panel. This now shows thumbnails of all linked and embedded graphics, stacks and repeats, and shows page numbers as links so that you can quickly jump to the image in situ.

You can also customise the panel to add sortable columns of information, such as scaling factor, or set these to show in the Links Info pane. The Links panel also lets you choose which application to use for editing and allows you to relink files intelligently. This is especially handy when switching from low-resolution JPEGs to output TIFFs.

There’s still the danger that you’ll forget to switch all your images, or that one will be modified externally or go missing, which is why InDesign has long provided a pre-flight checker. Now the capability goes live, flagging up potential pitfalls as you work. By default, the system checks for the basics, such as missing fonts and overset text, but you can customise your profile too.

InDesign CS4 finally offers the sort of advanced long document handling that Adobe has previously restricted to FrameMaker. Using the Cross References panel and dialog box you can create dynamic links either to manually-added text anchors or to any existing paragraph based on its style tag – either in the current document or other chapters.

Even more powerful is the ability to create and control multiple versions of the same publication to output the same catalogue with different regional content, currency and pricing.

Onscreen enhancements

The big new focus for InDesign CS4 is outputting projects for screen display. To take full advantage of such screen-based delivery, publications need to be engaging and interactive, and InDesign CS4 makes it easier to add text-based hyperlinks and to test them. It also makes it simple to add rollover buttons and page transitions. Its video handling remains unchanged, however, so there’s no Flash video support.

You can, of course, export to PDF, complete with live links, buttons, cross-references, transitions and Flash SWF files. But more exciting is the ability to output to SWF, which results in a highly compressed Flash movie, complete with HTML wrapper. InDesign CS4 even takes care of onscreen navigation with an interactive, clickable page curl effect.

It’s all very simple. In fact, it’s often too simple. Minor glitches include the fact that Acrobat doesn’t support the goto page command. And there are major holes, such as the lack of Flash-based support for basic animation, scripting and video playback – all features that QuarkXPress 8 does offer.

Adobe saves itself from the embarrassment of Quark providing superior output options with the introduction of XFL. This is a new XML-based interchange format designed for Flash handling and is intended as the eventual replacement for the binary FLA.

What this means for InDesign CS4 is that you can export an entire publication to XFL and open it directly in Flash CS4 Professional, with each spread coming through as a movie clip. You can then edit the text and graphics and add animation, scripting and video playback.

Again the system is by no means perfect – while text is editable, for example, that’s currently only possible on a line-by-line basis – and you need a copy of Flash Professional. However, such deep integration between InDesign and Flash leaves QuarkXPress 8 trailing.

In fact, that’s true generally of this release: despite the occasional shortcoming, the improvements and enhancements to InDesign CS4 means it remains a step ahead of Quark and looks set to further strengthen its hold on the publishing industry. The fact that it’s significantly cheaper merely serves to seal the deal.