Few applications feel as complete as Adobe’s InDesign. First released in 1999 as a direct attack against the then-industry standard, Quark, the page-layout application has been made faster and more feature-rich with each iteration. But even the best applications lack some features. Luckily, Adobe realized this some years ago and opened the doors to allow designers to expand this beloved set of tools through plugins.

Many designers don’t realize how powerful InDesign can be, especially when expanded through plugins and scripts. So, we’ve put together a small collection to show a bit of what InDesign can do. More than anything, these will help you work through your documents and publications much faster, automating the repetitive parts, and freeing you to focus on the fun stuff.

Working With Text

As designers, we spend most of our time dealing with text, ensuring that it’s inviting, easy to read and easy to navigate. We often give the finest attention to text, working with spacing to give the text balance and rhythm, sometimes letter by letter. What follows is a collection of plugins to help you tend to these details.

Line Numbering

This line-numbering plugin does exactly what it says on the box: it gives every line on a page a number. While InDesign is very capable of working with numbered lists, this plugin comes in handy when you don’t want the main text to display the numbers as you’re typesetting it — for example, because the text is lengthy and you’re still editing it. With this plugin, an extra text frame is added just for the numbers; so, once you delete it, the main copy won’t reflow. This makes editing much easier. “Please change the 34th line of copy” becomes a lot easier than “Please change the copy about three quarters of the way down the page.”

• Developer: In-Tools Solutions

Fitting Text

Sometimes you’ll have set up a grid and want a bit of text — say, a heading or pull quote — to fit the available space to get a sense of how big the text should be relative to the page. You would normally do this by holding down the “enlarge text” shortcut or by punching in random sizes until you get one that fits. With this tool, it’s done for you at the click of a button.

• Developer: In-Tools Solutions

All Caps to Small Caps

Small caps aren’t simply full capitals made smaller. They’re specially crafted to sit beautifully on a line of text. As Robert Bringhurst says in his brilliant Elements of Typographic Style, “They differ from large caps in stroke weight, letterfit, and internal proportions as well as in height. Any good set of small caps is designed as such from the ground up.” In other words, they add polish to typesetting and prevent awkward strings of capital letters. This script runs through your text and replaces string of full caps with small caps. The best part? Character styling is automatically applied to them (a little extra tracking on small caps is a beautiful thing), so you can tinker as needed.

• Developer: In-Tools Solutions

Proper Fractions

Just like the small-caps script above, this one will polish your type by rendering proper fractions, rather than leaving fractions in the clumsy format of two full-sized numerals divided by a slash.

• Developer: Dan Rodney

Convert Footnotes to Sidenotes

Adding footnote is a nice way to clarify information. Even nicer is hanging notes in the margins. With this plugin, footnotes will be converted to sidenotes and put into their own anchored frames; so, as the text reflows and moves about, the sidenotes will move with the text.

• Developer: Peter Kahrel

Convert Footnotes to Endnotes

From the same developer as the footnotes plugin above, this one will move your footnotes to the end of the article to which they belong. This is excellent if you’re working on a magazine or journal and the design calls for notes at the end of the article or essay.

• Developer: Peter Kahrel

Convert Multicolumn Text Frames to Individual Frames

While confining multi-column text to a single frame is usually best, sometimes breaking each frame into its own box makes the text easier to handle, especially when working with complex grids and formats (in newspapers, for example).

• Developer: Steve Wareham

Merge Text Frames

Other times, you’ll want to do the opposite and convert multiple frames to a single one to keep things neat.

• Developer: Justin Putney

Easy Diacritics

This script lets you combines any letter with any accent or diacritic using simple mnemonics — no arcane codes to remember, and no need to open the glyphs panel. If the combination exists as an actual glyph in the typeface, the script will insert that; if not, then it will automatically insert both glyphs and then intelligently kern them to look like a single character. InDesign Secrets explains how this works.

• Developer: Peter Kahrel

Working With Graphics And PDFs

Second only to text, links are what we spend most of our time on, sometimes creating them right in InDesign, and other times bringing them in as PDFs and TIFFs. The plugins and scripts below will supplement the importing options for both images of PDFs, as well as create graphics in InDesign itself.

Choose Object Style While Placing Pictures

Placing an image and applying a style is a two-step process that gets boring very quickly (especially if you’re producing a 200-page book for a gallery exhibition). With this script, it’s all automated. Just select an object style and start placing images. The style will automatically be applied, so that you can keep working quickly. (Note that this script was written for CS5.)

• Developer: Marijan Tompa

Easily Modify PDF Importing Options

InDesign has come a long way in how it places PDFs. But once a PDF is placed, the options you’ve selected are locked. This script enables you to configure those options (such as which page of the PDF to show), even after the PDF has been placed.

• Developer: Loic Aigon

Import Both PDF and INDD Files

Automatically place the pages from a PDF or INDD file onto multiple pages in a document. Quick tip: Both types of files are treated like graphics; so, if you wish to view changes, go back and refresh the original files in the “Links” palette.

• Developer: Scott Zanelli

Place All Pages of a PDF in InDesign

This PDF-placing script enables you to choose a page range from the PDF you’re placing, as well as the crop type. You can also specify which page in the InDesign document to start placing on (adding new pages as needed), where to place it on the page (with an optional offset), and whether to scale the PDF to the page’s size. If a document isn’t open, it will create one at the size of the PDF and then place the pages.

• Developer: Scott Zanelli

Column and Bar Graph Tools

The bread and butter for a lot of designers are things like annual reports, which are often filled with charts and graphs. This script helps you quickly and easily create clean bar graphs based on given values.

• Developer: Mariusz Sobolewski

Pie Charts Wizard

Create pie charts with various options (color tint, size, radio and angle, labels, color mode, etc.). Coolest of all, as you adjust the size of the oval, each segment is automatically recalculated. Also consider testing the beta of Claquos 2.

• Developer: Dmitriy Lapayev

Automation: Making A Lot Out Of A Little

If you perform the exact same task more than a few times, chances are the process can be automated somehow. Setting up the same type of job over and over (say, when designing calendars) can feel mundane. What follows are plugins and scripts that cut down on some of the repetition in your day.

Adobe InDesign Calendar Wizard

Around the same time every year, every other client of ours seems to want a calendar of some sort. This feature-rich script creates a number of different calendars, from simple one-pagers to 12-month multi-page calendars with text, complete with holidays and moon phases.

• Developer: Scott Selberg

Font Catalogue

Create a simple catalogue of all of the fonts on your system, including all weights and using your own sample text.

• Developer: KID

Wordalizer

Wordalizer is a word cloud generator for InDesign, available as a free trial or a pro version. It supports six languages, has a full word list editor, remembers your settings, lets you control word length, and more.

• Developer: Marc Autret

Scribbler Makes Text Look Shifty

Wanna give your text some bounce? Set maximum top and bottom gap values, and Scribbler will randomly shift the characters. This is great if you’re working on something with a lot of illustrations, such as a children’s book or an editorial.

• Developer: Loic Aigon

FontReporter

FontReporter collects information on the fonts used in your files, checks to see whether some fonts are missing, and tells you whether anything has gone wrong. You can choose to run it on just the current document or on a folder of documents.

• Developer: Marijan Tompa

MultiDo

The MultiDo plugin enables you to perform multiple undo or redo operations in one step. It automatically tracks the 100 most recent operations. This is incredibly handy when you’re quickly mocking up a design and are fine-tuning the text or images. If you want to jump far back quickly, you can do so, without having to watch as each bit of kerning and tracking you performed in the last hour is undone.

• Developer: 65bit

EasyHistory

The “History” palette in Photoshop is incredibly handy and is one feature that is missing in InDesign. Luckily, while we wait around for Adobe to rectify this, EasyHistory does the job well, showing all available undo and redo steps in one convenient palette. It’s available as a limited demo or as a commercial version.

• Developer: 65bit

Multi-Find and Multi-Change

We often have to clean up the text that clients give us, whether because content is spaced out by multiple tabs, or every sentence is double spaced, or dashes and other typographic marks are not where they should be. This plugin will be incredibly useful for those who work with the same clients repeatedly and see the same issues come up. Multi-Find/Change enables you to batch run saved find-change queries. It’s available as a limited trial or, if you find it handy, a commercial version.

• Developer: Automatication

Professionalism With A Click

Who doesn’t like to be seen as a professional? From tracking time spent on work to setting up a job for printing, plugins are available to help you manage your relationship with clients.

Compare Two Documents

Have you ever had a document crash and then weren’t sure what changes were made between the recovered version and your latest backup? Or perhaps you have multiple designers working on the same document? Or perhaps, during a particularly tense day, you weren’t careful about naming, versioning and saving your files and, thus, got a little lost the next morning? This script lets you compare two documents and see the differences between them, saving you from having to comb through nearly identical files for the slightest changes.

• Developer: Kasyan Servetsky

Indys Timer

Depending on how you track time, something like this could be a lifesaver. It automatically starts when you open a document and stops when you close it. It’s available as a limited free version, or you can pick up the commercial version.

• Developer: Stanislav Antos

MakeCropMarks.jsx

Occasionally, you’ll have to set up your own job for printing, at the very least to give the prepress operator a sense of what you’re aiming for. This script adds crop marks, with options for length, offset, bleed, stroke weight and more.

• Developer: Sergey Anosov

Print Tools Library

Here is a collection of printing aids (for color bars, registration marks, crop marks, fold marks and trim marks). Just drag and drop where needed.

• Developer: Clint Applegate

Convert All Text to Outlines

Some printers still require text to be outlined before going to press. Rather than go through it page by page, you can just use this script, which outlines all text in the document and puts it on a separate layer.

• Developer: Dmitriy Lapayev

IndexMatic

Setting up an index can be incredibly laborious. IndexMatic makes the process much easier, with its collection of powerful features and varied options. Boasting an impressive amount of documentation and help, the script will grow on you quickly.

• Developer: Marc Autret

Panel-Based Web Browser

All too often, you’ll need to load a Web browser to grab some content, verify some information or find a placeholder image. But getting off track in your usual browsing environment is easy. This plugin will keep you focused on the task at hand by opening up a browser window with InDesign’s palette.

• Developer: Marijan Tompa

Interactive Shortcuts Guide

InDesign is simple to work with, but learning all of the shortcuts can be complicated and time-consuming. This interactive guide is worth bookmarking; regular visits to it will help you learn the shortcuts to routine tasks.

• Developer: Marijan Tompa

Last Click

Tetris for InDesign

With all the time you’re now saving with these plugins and scripts, why not play a little Tetris in InDesign?

• Developer: DTP Tools

Conclusion

InDesign is a tool like no other in Adobe’s Creative Suite. While features are added to each version of Illustrator and Photoshop to help you create more varied kinds of graphics, InDesign seems to be focusing on streamlining and making the designer’s work easier. It is, then, as much design should be: quiet and out of the way. It’s seemed to me to always lie in the shadow as we apply our design and communication skills to the blank pages before us, keeping all of the best features accessible with a few key strokes.

We’re hoping that with these plugins and scripts, InDesign will become even easier, and quieter, for you to use, helping you to focus on the design at hand, rather than on the tool you’re using to bring it to life.

(al) (ea)

© Alexander Charchar for Smashing Magazine, 2013.

So you want to launch a simple website but don’t want to have to go through the dull process of setting up yet another hosting package. There is an easier solution. If you just want to launch a simple static website you can use GitHub Pages to host your site for free.

Lets get started.

Note: This post assumes that you have a GitHub account and some basic knowledge of the version control system Git.

Create Your GitHub Repository

The files that make up your website will need to be stored within a GitHub repository. If you’re creating a website to promote one of your existing GitHub projects you can add the website files to a new branch, otherwise you can just setup a new repo for your site.

Note: If you are not adding your website files to an existing repo make sure that you setup a new repo before continuing.

Now open up terminal (command prompt on Windows) and make sure that you have a copy of your GitHub repo on your computer. Once you got your local copy, move into the project folder using the cd command.

// Retrieve a copy of your GitHub repo.  
    git clone https://github.com/user/repository.git
    // Move into that directory.
    cd repository

Note: Make sure that you change the clone URL to the URL of your GitHub repo. This can be found on the main project page.

Creating an Orphan Branch

Now you need to create a new orphan branch within your repo that will hold all of your website files.

This new branch should be called gh-pages.

git checkout --orphan gh-pages

If you already had files in the master branch of your GitHub repo you now need to delete these from the new gh-pages branch. To do this you can use the following command:

git rm -rf .

Adding Your Website Files

Now that your repo has been properly setup it’s time to add all of the HTML, CSS and JavaScript files that make up your website. Once you have added these to your repo you need to commit the changes. To do this you can use the following command.

git commit -a -m "Adding pages"

Note: The -a flag is shorthand for git add .

Pushing Your Changes to GitHub

Okay so you’ve got all your files where they need to be. The only thing left to do now is to push the new gh-pages branch up to GitHub. You do this using the git push command.

git push origin gh-pages

That’s it! Your website should now be available at http://username.github.io/repository/.

Using a Custom Domain

The last thing I want to cover in this post is how you can use your own domain name with your new GitHub-hosted website.

First you will need to create a new file in your GitHub repo called CNAME that contains the domain name (or subdomain) that you wish to use. This file should be placed in the gh-pages branch if you are using project-pages (as we have been in this post). If you are using user-pages the file should be placed in the master branch.

Your CNAME file might look like the following:

teamtreehouse.com

Next you will need to update the DNS records for your domain name. This is usually done through a control panel provided by your domain registrar.

If you want to use a root domain (such as teamtreehouse.com) for your website you will need to setup a new A record that points to the IP address 204.232.175.78.

If you are using a subdomain (such as blog.teamtreehouse.com) it’s best to create a new CNAME record that points to your GitHub user subdomain (**username**.github.io). This is so that the DNS will be automatically adjusted if the servers IP address changes on GitHub.

Note: For information about the difference between CNAME and A records check out this video.

It may take a little while for your DNS changes to take effect. This is usually no more than a few hours. Once the changes have gone through, you should be able to access your new website from your custom domain name.

Final Thoughts

In this post I’ve showed you how to host pages that you’ve created yourself but it’s worth noting that GitHub also has a tool for automatically generating pages for your projects. You can launch this tool from the project settings page.

GitHub pages does limit you to using static assets (HTML, CSS and JS) for your websites, but you could use something like Jekyll to make it easier to generate these files.

It’s not going to meet everyone’s needs but if you just want to launch a simple website, GitHub pages is a quick and easy way to get started.

The post Using GitHub Pages To Host Your Website appeared first on Treehouse Blog.

Dr. Richard Forno, Director of UMBC's Graduate Cybersecurity Program and Assistant Director of the UMBC Center for Cybersecurity, appeared on WEAA (88.9FM) Baltimore's 'The Marc Steiner Show' as part of a long-form panel discussion on assorted cybersecurity issues.   He was joined by Edward Erickson of the Baltimore City Paper and Stephen Bono, CEO of Baltimore-based Independent Security Evaluators.

The show, Hacking: Implications For Our Privacy and Security, was aired on August 15, 2013.

“We turn to the topic of hacking. At recent hacking conventions in Las Vegas, cybersecurity experts revealed how easy it is to hack everything from cars to pacemakers. General Keith B. Alexander, Director of the National Security Agency, spoke at one of the conferences about his organization’s use of technology to spy on people.”

Today, we celebrate part 1 of the 2013 PROMISE Summer Success Institute with a Dissertation House, and a Postdoctoral & Alumni Writing Suite at the SMC Center at UMB! Postdocs and alumni may join us virtually by posting your goals here. Dissertation House (DH) participants will be meeting with Dr. Wendy Carter-Veale. Those participating in the “in-person” DH and those who are participating virtually can post their goals here: http://dissertationhouse.wordpress.com/blog-online-challenge/summer-2013-challenge/.  Let’s make it a productive day!

Today, we celebrate part 1 of the 2013 PROMISE Summer Success Institute with a Dissertation House, and a Postdoctoral & Alumni Writing Suite at the SMC Center at UMB! Postdocs and alumni may join us virtually by posting your goals here. Dissertation House (DH) participants will be meeting with Dr. Wendy Carter-Veale. Those participating in the “in-person” DH and those who are participating virtually can post their goals here: https://dissertationhouse.wordpress.com/blog-online-challenge/summer-2013-challenge/.  Let’s make it a productive day!

This free set of icons contains the logos of top online payment solutions and credit cards like PayPal, Google Wallet, Visa, and MasterCard. This icon set contains 12 icons and is perfect for use in e-commerce websites. We have also included the PSD file in case you want to make changes to the icons.

This free icon set is brought to you by Responsive, a design and development studio in Bucharest, Romania.

Preview

Here is a list of the icons in this set:

• PayPal icon
• Visa icon
• MasterCard icon
• Skrill icon
• eBay icon
• Discover icon
• Maestro icon
• Solo icon
• Cirrus icon
• 2Checkout icon
• Western Union icon
• Google Wallet icon

Download

• Free Online Payment Icons (ZIP, 5.98 MB)

Related Content

• 10 Excellent Online Payment Systems
• Tips for Creating an Excellent E-Commerce Website
• Free Icon Fonts for Web User Interfaces
• Related categories: Freebies and Resources

About the Author

Stefan Irava is the Lead Designer for Responsive, a Bucharest-based design and development studio. Stefan is also the Lead Designer for Revolge, an online drag-and-drop design tool for creating stunning WordPress themes. See more work from Stefan on Dribbble and find out more about Revolge here.

The post Free Online Payment Icon Set (PSD and PNG) appeared first on Six Revisions.

I’m sure you’ve heard of personas and scenarios, but let’s start with a quick explanation of how they are useful in the design process:

A persona is an elementary tool of usability and user experience design and describes a typical member of your target audience. Although a persona is a fictional representation of a user, it is based on real data; the persona should be as close to a real potential user as possible.

A scenario is a ‘story’ based on the persona’s experience of, journey with, and actions taken while interacting with your app or site. It explains the process a user might follow, their capabilities, reasons, goals, and motivations in relation to the site. Scenarios explain everyday situations; how the app or site fits in the persona’s daily life, what got them to use it, how they use it, why they keep on using it, and so on.

Together they describe the various contexts in which someone could be using your site. This, in turn, flushes out problems and opportunities that ought to be addressed.

What are they good for?

Both personas and scenarios are a way for designers and developers to keep in touch with their target audience, as they progress with a project. They keep us in check and make sure we are in fact creating for these users.

For instance, if you are creating a color picking app you will want to make sure that your personas have a desire and a reason to use such an app. Therefore, you might create a persona who is a designer, or someone who is redecorating their living room. It has to make sense; it has to be in context. This way you can use personas and scenarios to identify what you could be doing better to anticipate how a designer would use a color picking app, such as to pair up colors rather than as a random color generator.

As you can see, thinking this through allows you to focus on features and functions that your audience actually wants and cares about; it allows for the process to be built from the ground up, and the project will be much more efficient and effective if we focus on users from the very beginning of development to the end.

The benefits of personas and scenarios

Personas specifically allow us as designers to make predictions about how our users will respond to our design decisions, based on these mental models. They change the questions we are asking, from ‘what is the best solution for this problem’ to ‘what would be the best solution to suit Angie, the freelance designer’. These two simple and fundamental tools have a psychological effect, a reminder that the project is not at all about us but the people who will use it; and that, right there is the most powerful effect personas and scenarios can offer.

In more specific terms, personas provide a personality for a user you are creating your site or app for. It’s a motivating aspect for sure. You have a persona that describes Samantha, an easy going, tree hugging graphic design student who has high technology proficiency but is indecisive – which is why this color picking app is perfect for her. Scenarios communicate character and values of the user as they journey through a specific goal. In a scenario you could go over over how a friend recommended her this app and how she goes to explore it for the first time, what she found useful or confusing.

Additionally, having a face put to your target audience discourages big directional changes from stakeholders as they now have a particular person in mind, they now have a human connection attached to the project and can anticipate what dramatic effects these changes could have. This is all possible with a simple, fictional persona. It’s fascinating how much impact a simple doodle can have.

In addition, this is an extremely inexpensive approach, compared with the costs, in terms of time as well as money, involved in talking to real users every time you have a decision to make.

Storytelling in itself is a very powerful tool; it brings people together, it brings in entertainment and meaning. By using personas in scenarios you are allowing for a special bond between your team and your audience. It allows them to come alive when you cannot literally talk to them yourself. They help your team understand and figure out how your audience might tackle problems and issues which may arise. As a result, it helps you to think about solutions to problems from the perspective of the target audience.

I’ve mentioned briefly how personas ground us as designers. We may get so caught up in the project and in our own opinions that we need to be reminded that this is not about us; it is about the users. Having a bunch of personas hung on the wall is a great way to never forget about your users. As we get deep into a project, we may be too invested in our work to think clearly and objectively; this, in turn, could really harm the end product. You do not want to risk designing something that your target audience doesn’t appreciate.

Creating great personas and scenarios

I think a valid question at this point would be what it takes to create great personas and scenarios. First and foremost, your personas have to be based on actual user research so that you are not wasting your time and resources creating personas with no relation to your intended audience. If you have your data figured out, you will create your personas accurately and provide them with personalities, skills and motivations that are just right for you – they will guide you well.

The same goes for scenarios, if your personas foundation is solid, your scenarios will be too as you will be able to create accurate scenarios and therefore identify potential problems that these users might face. Additionally, another thing that makes for great personas and scenarios is regular application and reference within your project progression.

Conclusion

Personas and scenarios are a staple for user experience design. Not having them in your projects would significantly degrade its quality, as the whole purpose of user experience design is to ensure the best possible experience for the users. If you do not count them in while creating your product, the experience will not match your users’ expectations or capabilities and therefore suffer. On the other hand, using these tools has been proven to significantly improve a project in terms of user experience.

Do you use personas and scenarios to design sites? How do you make them realistic? Let us know in the comments.

Featured image/thumbnail, people image via Shutterstock.

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