My Top Righteous CS4 Features!

I'm sure this isn't the first post of it's nature and it certainly wont be the last. But my good friend Brenda over at ineedchocolate.com asked me if I would compile my top ten new features of  CS4. I've also received several requests from clients to do the same. I'll start with InDesign and follow up with posts on the other applications. This is by no means a comprehensive list, it's just some of my favorite features at a glance so here goes.

InDesign
GREP styles - Everyone knows by this point how much of a GREP freak I am and now in CS4 you can actually apply GREP commands within a style. For instance I can tell every instance of a word or words that appear within parentheses to format as italic automatically! This is beyond nested styes, this is something that people have been asking about for several versions now. A huge benefit to anyone working with longer documents.

New Zoom Feature - I've always kind of liked the Navigator panel in previous versions of InDesign, but I have to admit, I rarely used it. InDesign CS4 in some ways integrates the navigator into the InDesign interface. If you have the hand tool selected, you can click-and-hold for a second and it zooms out so you can see your entire document and you get a red rectangle like in the old Navigator panel that allows you to move to a different part of your document and then when you release the mouse button, it zooms back in on that area. I like this implementation and think I'll be using it a lot!

Smart Guides - This features applies to both InDesign and Illustrator actually, but the new smart guides feature in both programs has been significantly improved. Their actually smart now! They aren't as obtrusive as smart guides in previous versions of illustrator and they actually work very well. You can position items on your page and it shows you spacing details, sizing details (if you're scaling), and of course positioning details relative to other objects on your page. This will eliminate several trips to the Align panel in both programs.

Application Frame - This applies to all CS4 programs and only really affects Mac users. They've added the application frame that puts a solid gray background behind your documents so you don't see your desktop while you are working. It's completely optional so don't worry! I rarely like features that mimic the Windows version of anything however it always annoyed me that my cluttered desktop was always looming in the background of documents that I was working on. I find this a welcome addition.

Dynamic Preflighting - While working on an InDesign document you now get an active preflight status in the lower-left corner of the screen, making you aware of any potential issues that appear within your document. In addition, you can now create preflight profiles that control what InDesign looks for and considers a problem. The preflighting is much more robust than it was in previous versions. Still not a full-featured preflight program, but significantly improved!

Rotate Spread View - You can now rotate the view of individual spreads in a document to make it easier to work on. For instance, when you have that brochure that has a tear-off panel and the content is rotated. You can simply rotate that page to make it easier to work on!

Nested Line Styles - This one is really cool! You can now apply formatting to text in the nested styles section to lines of text within a paragraph. For instance, maybe you wanted the first two lines of a paragraph to appear in small caps. You can now do that in CS4!

Flash Export - Adobe continued it's push to integrate all of the applications in CS4. You can now export your documents to a flash .swf file that includes page transitions. This is a great way to get your feet wet with flash!