Power users keep their hands on the keyboard as much as possible. After all, moving a mouse or trackball (or, worse, trackpad) is nice, but not efficient. It’s easy to move from page to page in InDesign with keyboard shortcuts. But what about from object to object?

I am really pleased to announce a set of scripts for InDesign that let you navigate around your document, from object to object, or even with multiple objects (more on what that means in a minute). This set of scripts was written by Kris Coppieters of Rorohiko (also known as Lightning Brain), the makers of a whole slew of astonishingly great plug-ins (check their Downloads section). Please note that these scripts are (as far as I know) for InDesign CS3 only.

How the scripts work:

1. First, download the scripts by clicking on this link. (Note that you’ll need to be signed in to the MOGO site to download this file, but registration is free and easy!)

2. Unzip the folder of scripts. You’ll find a ReadMe file in there, which explains the system and how it works.

3. In InDesign, choose Window > Automation > Scripts. This opens the Scripts panel.

4. Right-click (or Control-click on a Mac with a one-button mouse) on the User folder inside the Scripts panel, and choose Open in Finder (or Open in Windows Explorer, if you’re using Windows). This opens the proper folder on your desktop, so you don’t have to go hunting around for it.

5. Drag the KeyboardNavigation folder into the folder called “Scripts Panel” and then return to InDesign; if you open the User folder in the Scripts panel (by clicking the little triangle next to it), you should see the folder you just added.

6. If you open that folder inside the Scripts panel, you can run any script by double-clicking on it. But that’s not efficient — we want to assign keyboard shortcuts to these. So choose Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts.

7. If you have made a custom keyboard shortcut set already, then make sure it’s selected in the Set pop-up menu. Otherwise, click New Set and give your new set a name.

8. In the Product Area pop-up menu, choose Scripts, and scroll down the list until you see User: KeyboardNavigation:

9. Notice that each script navigates to a different object on your page. For example, GoDown.jsx selects the next object down on the page (”down” meaning toward the bottom of the page); GoFarLeft.jsx selects the left-most object on the page; and so on. For each script you expect to use, assign a shortcut to it.  The ReadMe file has suggestions for shortcuts you can use, such as Ctrl+Left Arrow for GoLeft and Ctrl+Right Arrow for GoRight. But you can choose any shortcuts you want. Don’t forget to click Assign after each shortcut.

10. When you’re done assigning shortcuts, click OK and try them out on your layout!

What Gets Selected:

One of the most amazing things about these scripts is that they actually look at where objects are on your page in relation with each other. For example, let’s look at this page layout with four text frames on it:

Currently frame 1 is selected. If we choose GoRight, frame 2 becomes selected, even though “technically” frame 3 is the next frame to the right. It does this because frame 2 is more “to the right of frame 1″ than frame 3 is.

If frame 1 is selected and we choose GoDown, then frame 3 becomes selected for the same reason (frame 3 is more “in line” with frame 1 than is frame 2). However, when frame 3 is selected and we choose GoUp, then frame 2 becomes selected! It’s hard to explain, but it’s very intuitive to use.

Here’s a few other things that need explaining, but are very powerful. First, if frame 1 is selected when you choose GoFarRight, frame 2 becomes selected. If you choose GoFarRight again, you’ll get frame 4. This is because frame 2 is far right of frame 1! (That is, “far” means of the current object, not necessarily the right-most object on the page.)

Next, if frame 4 is selected and you choose GoDown, it will select the top object on the next page. That is, you can navigate from objects on one page to the next!

Z Order:

Several of the scripts have to do with moving in “z-order” — that is, forward or backward in a stack of objects. For example, in this layout:

If frame 1 is selected and you choose GoForward, it takes you “toward the front” of the stack. In this case, even though frame 2 is technically above frame 1 on the layer, the script selects frame 3 because it’s the logical choice.

Grids of Objects:

These scripts also work when you have more than object selected on your page! For example, let’s say these three odd-numbered frames were selected on this page:

When you choose GoRight, then frames 2, 4, and 6 would become selected. This is a great way to navigate among objects that are laid out (more or less) in a grid!

Entering Text in Frames:

You may notice that there are two scripts in the folder that are not for object navigation: GoTextEnd and GoTextStart. These actually place the text cursor inside the currently-selected frame. If a frame (any kind of frame, even graphic or unassigned frame) is empty, the script converts it to a text frame and places the cursor in it.

Again, it’s all about keeping your hands on the keyboard. You can navigate to a frame, place the text cursor in it, edit, then return to object navigation mode by pressing Esc. (Esc is not part of the scripts; that’s just a normal InDesign shortcut for switching back to the Selection tool.)

The more I use these scripts, the more I find them useful. After all, who doesn’t want to get more efficient?!

Let Kris know what you think of the scripts in the comments below.

The Getting Started with Dreamweaver and CSS Web Publishing Workshop seminar tour began with a sold-out event in Los Angeles this past week. The workshop is a one-day event and is a collaborative effort from MOGO Media and Adobe Systems Incorporated.Attendees were greeted at the fabulous the Ritz Carlton in Marina Del Ray with a sumptuous breakfast, thanks to Adobe. Over 300 attendees jammed the ballroom to then see Steve Forde of GridIron Software give a great demo of their recently-announced Flow software. After Steve answered a few questions, Brian Wood took the stage and kicked off the all-day event focused on publishing websites using Dreamweaver CS3 and CSS.Brian started at the beginning and spoke about laying the groundwork for websites using familiar software applications, like Photoshop, Illustrator, and Fireworks. Brian then spent some time discussing just what exactly CSS and how it works. What was really great about this part was how easy it was to understand. Brian made constant comparisons to traditional print design terms (for example, how CSS ID tags compare to Layers in Illustrator or InDesign), making the session easy to follow, and seeming less technical.During lunch break, tens of attendees lined up to speak personally with Brian, asking questions on specific items from the class, and asking for advice on how to implement their own personal projects. In fact, Brian had little time to grab lunch for himself, as the afternoon sessions got underway quickly.  Brian then took the attentive audience into a deep dive, covering Dreamweaver CS3. Putting everything together into a site, Brian showed how to integrate design elements from Photoshop and even covered how to import content directly from InDesign CS3. At the end of the day, one lucky attendee walked away with a full copy of Adobe Creative Suite 3 Design Premium!With a great start in Los Angeles, the next stop on the tour is New York city, this week, on June 4th at the Marriott Marquis in Times Square. The event is already sold-out with over 400 attendees and it promises to be another exciting day of learning and fun.With dates coming up in Washington DC, Chicago, and Boston, there’s still time to sign up and benefit from this great event. Check out www.mogoseminars.com for dates and registration information. Hope to see you there! 

Coming to The Creative Suite Conference in Nashville, TN? As you know, this city is internationally renowned for its music and culture, and you should definitely plan on getting out while you’re in town. Here are a few things that are going on around town.

Note that we’re at the Sheraton, downtown. Here’s some information on this location.

Airport

If you’re flying in to Nashville International, take a look around. They have a number of arts exhibits up. You can find out more about them here. If you want to look into ground transportation before you show up, check out this page.

Arts and Museums
Nashville is home to some wonderful museums and galleries. For example:

• Frist Museum (currently showing Monet to Dali, and a collection of Tiffany glass works).
• Country Music Hall of Fame
• Tennesee State Museum (including a current Renoir exhibit)

Music and Events

You can’t walk down the street in Nashville without being slapped upside the head with 15 different kinds of music! There’s also theatre and other fun events going on while we’re here.

• List of live music playing around Nashville.
• Grand Ol Opry (Tuesday night performances)
• Assassins (Stephen Sondheim’s oddest musical; in fact, one of the strangest topics for a musical ever)
• The Kids in the Hall (remember their HBO comedy show?)

Restaurants

There are a lot of restaurants in Nashville. I’m looking forward to some excellent eatin’! (I had the best-ever Reuben sandwich in this town.) Here’s google’s take on a few restaurants near the Sheraton hotel.

More Stuff

If you want even more information, check out the Nashville Visitor’s Bureau, or Citysearch!

There’s no shortage of chatter on the ‘net these days about Apple’s iPhone and its lack of support for Adobe Flash. And with today’s announcement from Apple about the release of an SDK so that developers can begin to create their own applications for the iPhone, the lack of any mention of Flash is still causing many to scratch their heads. I don’t claim to be particularly technical, nor do I have any “inside” information from either Adobe or Apple in this regard. But I do have an opinion that I think is worth taking a closer look at.

I should start off by clearly stating that as a company, I love both Adobe and Apple. I totally “get” both companies and I used to work at Adobe. And I’m friendly with folks from both companies. I use (and rely) on their products every day. So I intend no bias towards any of these companies. I’m not taking sides or stating who is right or wrong, simply because I don’t think it has anything to do with that at all. It has to do with vision and what each company values and sees as its future.

The title of this article pretty much sums up where I think the “battle” lies.

Apple is a firm believer in the web browser. After all, they have their own, called Safari, which is pretty darn good (I am using it right this moment, actually). Apple developed a “mobile” version of Safari which runs on the iPhone. It’s wonderful because it offers the same experience that users expect on their desktop now. In fact, Apple’s stance has always been “you don’t NEED to develop anything for iPhone — just use Web 2.0 standards in your normal web applications and it will run on iPhone just as it runs on a desktop”. The idea is noble, although for a variety of reasons, I don’t buy it. I’ll explain shortly.

Adobe is a firm believer in content. After all, Adobe doesn’t own a “browser”, but they do own the industry standard design tools, and a rather capable developer framework. Adobe obviously wants a developer to be able to create best-in-class content that works and looks great — EVERYWHERE. And that’s the key point here. Adobe believes that content exists outside the browser experience. That’s the premise of Rich Internet Applications (what Adobe refers to as RIA’s). The point is, your content may live on the ‘net, but you should be able to access that content from anywhere, even outside a web browser. We’re kind of trained to think that we need to “go to the web” because that’s just the way it’s always been. And mainly because there was no other good way to access the content consistently. In reality, content should come to us — wherever we are. That’s what AIR is all about — it’s an environment that allows you to run RIA’s which aren’t in your browser (I love how AIR reads as RIA in reverse). They’re on your desktop, or elsewhere.

Here’s an analogy I’ve come up with that I think describes the difference. Say you want to travel from one place to another. We can climb into our car and drive to our destination. The car is a vehicle that transports us. It’s a machine that we’re familiar with. We use it because it allows us to get to our destination. Compared to the ‘net, think of the destination as your website and the car as your web browser. The car takes you to your website. Without the car, you can’t get there. But say we’re living in the future and we have the ability to teleport, or beam ourselves to any destination. If we wanted to visit a destination, we don’t need a vehicle — we just press a button and we are instantly transported there. So the experience is very different — the car isn’t necessary. It’s just you and the content.

With Adobe’s recent announcement about Flex 3 and AIR and with the positioning of Flash Lite 3, I think Adobe has made it clear that they see the future of “web apps” as having nothing at all to do with a browser at all. And if that’s the way Adobe and Flash are heading, then Apple’s vision of a browser based user experience puts both companies on a conceptual point of view that is moving in two very different directions.

From a pure mobile development standpoint, I also think that Apple’s idea of just extending the desktop experience to the mobile platform is somewhat missing the point of just what mobile actually is. More often than not, the mobile experience isn’t the same as the desktop experience. When I’m on the go, I may require certain information, or require certain services. Cameron Moll actually has some fantastic ideas about this. A good mobile application will not simply be a repurposed desktop app, but rather one that has been designed and developed specifically for the mobile experience itself.

So will Flash ever run on the iPhone? Only time will tell. But if what they say is true (content being king and all), we as users will certainly have lots to look forward too.

Adobe has taken what it deems as the Next Big Step. With the official release today of Flex 3 and Adobe AIR, developers will be able to begin a process of what many see as the decline of the Web browser, as we know it. These days, people want to be able to access and use their data no matter where they are — be it at their desk, on a laptop, or while on the road on their mobile device. With hosted services and data that lives on the internet, that’s certainly possible. But Web browser support (the main way of accessing the internet) is iffy at best on many devices. And even where such access is possible, the experience itself isn’t consistent.Adobe is hoping that AIR changes all that, by allowing developers to access the internet through their applications directly. Think of it as accessing all the data the internet provides, but without the Web browser. And the Flex 3 framework gives developers the ability to assure a consistent experience across multiple platforms. The beauty of all of this is that the result for end users will be that very little change will be evident — you’ll still use the same desktop applications you always have. The difference will be on how those very applications that live on the desktop can now access hosted services seamlessly.The question is, there are several companies (including Google and Microsoft) who are vying for space in this arena as well. So AIR doesn’t sit alone in this regard. Will developers choose Adobe’s solution over those from other companies? While there’s no answer to that at this early point in the game, one thing is for sure: the desktop experience for end users will change for the better. And that will start happening really soon. 

It looks like the InDesign Conference and the Vector Conference will start off with a bang in Miami next week. Word has it that Adobe is planning on showing some kind of a technology preview at their keynote address – something to do with InDesign and Flash. Michael Ninness and Tim Cole are scheduled to deliver the keynote — both of them showmen in their own right. So it should be interesting. Can’t wait!

As I live in the northern part of the USA, and it’s February, I have to admit that I’m really looking forward to the four conferences in Miami at the end of the month (plus GOA). But the conferences aren’t the only things happening in Miami that week! There’s all kinds of cool stuff going on around town. Here’s a quick rundown of some events, things to watch out for, and places to eat around town to get you started.

Art

If you’re flying in, check out this art at the Miami International Airport.

Then, look at the Miami Art Guide for everything else happening around town

Near the conference center, you’ll find a very wide spectrum of museums, including:

• Jewish Museum of Florida which has a number of exhibits, including the one I’m looking forward to: Zap Pow Bam - Super Heroes of the Golden Age of Comics 1938-1950
• The Wolfsonian
• World Erotic Art Museum
• Art Center
  

Music and Events

1. If you’re coming in a little early, you might (or might not) be interested in a Barry Manilow concert on Sunday. Or, here’s a list of what’s happening Monday night (or any other night that week).
2. Manheim Steamroller is playing at the Jackie Gleason (next door to the convention center) while we’re there.
3. In case you’re not spending enough time inside in the dark, the Miami International Film Festival is happening that week, too.
4. New World Symphony has some wonderful Bach and Baroque coming up at the end of the week.
5. Need a more quiet form of “wildlife”? The International Orchid Festival is going on in town, too.

Restaurants

Top Twenty Miami Beach Restaurants

If you’re a vegetarian, check out the restaurant ideas at Meatless Miami ; we’ve heard very good things about this kosher vegetarian restaurant, called Gourmet Carrot

And, if you’re interested in Kosher, here’s one of Mordy’s favorites: Tea for Two: Italian food… and sushi!

And More…

You can find even more at the Miami Visitor’s Bureau, of course.

Do you know any cool things going on in town that week? Any recommendations? Let us know below!

I have something to confess: I personally really don’t like Flash. I mean, I love the format, and I sure want to be able to create Flash content. But I’ve just never really wrapped my head about that application and that crazy-making actionscript. So when I saw this little tidbit appear in CreativePro.com, about some new Adobe technology code-named Bordeaux, it definitely caught my eye. I started thinking: “Hey, maybe I’ll be able to create SWF content without Flash pretty soon!”

Granted, Bordeaux is only rumor at this point, and Adobe has not publicly said anything about it. But come on, Adobe must know that there are plenty of people like me out there — people with a lot of experience with the Adobe Creative Suite way of doing things, and who crave Flash output without using that Flash application. They’d be crazy not to be working on something behind the scenes.

I hope we’ll hear more about Bordeaux and other great SWF developments in the coming months. I’ll sure be asking our friends at Adobe about this when we see them at the Miami conferences. And while I’m there, perhaps I’ll sit in on one or two of the introductory Flash sessions in order to get over my Flash-phobia!

Hope to see you in Miami, too, or at another one of our future conferences.

Macworld was fun, frantic, and exhausting — just like it always is. The show was full of interesting gadgets and software, as well as a huge number of things I would be hard pressed to care less about. Here’s a run-down of a few things we found interesting or surprising.

Biggest surprise: The unbelievably large number of companies whose express purpose in life appeared to be selling iPod and iPhone cases. I mean, come on…

Coolest scanner: Fujitsu continues to surprise me with cool document scanners. Their newest, the ScanSnap S300M, is so tiny that you can easily bring it with you on the road and use it with USB power from your laptop. This is a roll-fed scanner (not a flatbed), so it’s designed for documents, not images. But after talking to the folks at Fujitsu, I’m convinced that it could scan photos pretty darn well in a pinch.

Fun Media Moment: I was interviewed by a guy from Forbes magazine about the new MacBook Air. Unfortunately, I liked the new finish on the laptop a little too much (it really is velvety) and ended up in trouble with my wife after the article described me as stroking it lustily. (How often does the word “lustily” show up in a business magazine!?)

Adobe’s booth was a happenin’ place, of course, though each time I walked by they appeared to be showing the newest version of Photoshop Elements. I am constantly amazed at that software; even though Photoshop can do it all, Elements makes a number of complex photo-editing features so simple that I think many creative professionals may want to use it.

Most astonishing software-to-be: GridIron Software demoed their Flow software, which watches what you do and remembers relationships among your files. For example, if you place a PSD image into an Illustrator file, then place that AI file into InDesign, then make a PDF of that file, Flow knows… and it can later tell you which PSD and AI file was used in that final PDF. If you try to delete the AI file, it’ll warn you saying, “Hey, did you know that this is currently being used in this InDesign file?” It’s amazing software. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really exist yet. They hope to be shipping this coming summer.

How about you? Were you at Macworld? If so, what noteworthy software and hardware did you see?

Barry, Mordy, and I are all heading from our respective hometowns to converge at Macworld 2007 in San Francisco this week. While we tend to be bi-platform (Mac/Windows), our primary machines are Macs, and we always look forward to seeing what kinds of fun and new technologies are on the scene around the Moscone center. Look for us! Barry will be in his usual flourescent-colored shirt; Mordy will be waving down everyone who will listen to him pontificate about Illustrator; and I’ll be the one wandering around somewhere between total overwhelm and nerdgasm.

Image courtesy istockphoto