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*** DesignGeek ***
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Tips and techniques for the digital designer
In this issue:
The Listserv Issue
-- Dealing with New Font Formats
-- Search Engine Optimizing
-- InDesign Tip Called "Brilliant!" by Sir David Blatner
-- Found: Quark/Windows En Dash Keystroke
Issue 14, 1/29/04
Written by Anne-Marie "HerGeekness" Concepcion
... for her clients, colleagues, random contacts and interested subscribers
© 2004 Seneca Design & Training, Inc.
The Listserv Issue
Confession: The three main articles in this issue of DesignGeek are all reprints of stuff I've recently published elsewhere. I'm giving them another airing because a) I think they're good and useful, and fit the mission of DesignGeek; b) You probably haven't read them yet, so what do you care; and c) I've got a project deadline today and can't spend my usual 8+ hours writing this baby up.
If you're a member of the QuarkXPress, InDesign, or GoLive listservs (e-mail based discussion groups), you may recognize the content, because that's where these "articles" first appeared ... they are recent posts of mine, replies to questions posted by other listserv members, lightly edited for clarity.
I strongly encourage anyone who's taken the trouble of subscribing to DesignGeek to also subscribe to one or more of these groups; if you like DesignGeek, you'll love listservs. They're a primo source of information and a great resource for getting quick answers to your questions.
I subscribe to about 20 listservs, ranging from the application-centric ones above to more general ones like Color Theory (Photoshop et.al. color correction) and Evolt (CSS/Standards-based web development). Of course I don't read every message posted to the listservs (some get over 100 messages a day), but I do save them all in their own mailboxes, letting my e-mail program filter them there as they come in. Hey, hard drive space is cheap these days and e-mails take up little room.
When I have a few moments I might sort a listserv's mailbox by subject and read up on the interesting posts and replies (called "message threads"). When I have a question or need a referral, I almost always first turn to the collective mind of the listserv membership by sending an e-mail to the main listserv address. All subscribers get my e-mail in seconds, so I just watch for answers to come in, which normally arrive in a matter of minutes.
Being a good listserv citizen means occasionally checking new posts to see if someone's asking a question to which you've got a good answer, and taking the time to write it up and send it. It doesn't have to be as detailed as the following posts I wrote, a quick note or useful URL is often all that's called for.
There are literally tens of thousands of listservs available of varying quality. The best make it easy to subscribe to and unsubscribe from, maintain searchable archives, keep spammers off the list, and don't share your e-mail address with third parties.
Links to the subscription pages for my favorite listservs (all meeting these standards, and including the ones mentioned here) are on my web site in the Online Training and Support page -- scroll to the bottom of the page when you get there:
<http://senecadesign.com/training/online.html>
Look forward to seeing you on the lists!
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Dealing with New Font Formats
[Here's a short one to give you a taste of typical listserv messages. This is a combination of two posts I sent to the QuarkXPress listserv in January, in reply to two different posts that each had questions about new font formats.]
Subscriber Posts:
"What is a .dfont? What exactly are the *Pro* fonts?"
My Reply:
.dfonts are True Type fonts with all their data in the data fork (no resource fork info). They only work as is on Macs running OS X. If you use them in a doc on OS X and then convert that doc to PDF, the .dfonts become embedded True Type fonts indistinguishable from other TT fonts. Thus the PDF can be opened/printed on any platform/OS with Reader or Acrobat.
You can convert .dfonts to TT fonts if you like with DFontifier:
<http://homepage.mac.com/mdouma46/dfont/dfont.html>
and I think CrossFont (Windows):
<http://www.asy.com/scrcf.htm>
(note: I haven't tried either one), also there's a short series of commands you can run in Terminal to make a TT copy of a .dfont loaded on your system.
Re "Pro" fonts ... They are Open Type fonts that contain glyphs for small caps, figures, etc. There are other OpenType Fonts called "Standard" that are simply the usual Type 1 fonts converted to Open Type format...no cool extra glyphs.
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Search Engine Optimizing
[A longer post in response to a message from a GoLive listserv member in December.]
Subscriber Post (partial quote, it was a long message):
"I'm about to start a new site and would LIKE to optimize it for search engines, particularly Google (since most folks these days seem to think it's the most important). [...] I was hoping for something along the lines of a few relatively unbiased recommendations from people with recent experience."
My Reply:
First, forget keywords. The old "keyword meta tags" thing doesn't work well anymore. Because of nefarious people taking advantage of search engine's attention to keyword meta tags, only a couple search engines actually pay attention to those these days.
Google is one 500-pound gorilla example that does NOT take keyword meta tags into account, and Google is not only the most popular search engine, they are the licensed technology behind a few other search engines and directories.
Top things that increase a site's ranking without paying for sponsored listings:
1. Popularity (how many other sites link to it)
2. Title tag -- the title of the browser window (contains search term)
3. Body copy near top of page (contains search term.. header-formatted etc. and/or bolded and/or linked search terms in body copy are given more weight than plain text)... note in a multi-column format, the left-most column is "nearest the top"
4. Body copy anywhere (contains search term)
5. Alt tags (hidden text identifying images) for images (contain search term)
6. Page was updated recently
Combinations of 2-5 are most powerful.
There are 2 things you and/or your client can do to increase search engine pickup (in addition to the usual tips for adding ALT tags and staying away from frames, etc.):
1. Come up with page titles and write the body copy with item #s 2-5 (above) in mind. Think of what people may enter in search engines as a search term, and incorporate that into the page title, the headline of the story, the first paragraph of the story, can you put it in bold, can you repeat it, etc. Of course you want to have excellent writing... don't make it sound awkward just to jam search terms in there... but keep it in mind.
2. Get as many other web sites as possible to link to your site (item #1 above).
Ideally a) The sites themselves are popular with your target audience... but any sites are better than no sites; b) The link to your site would appear in their most popular page(s) such as their home page or a section opener page(s); and c) The link to your site would be in bold and would contain your domain name AND search terms.
Here are some examples of what I mean (underlined _words_ represent the linked text):
Least powerful:
Acme.com, from our friends at Client Company, provides top quality products. Click _here_ to visit.
Better:
_Acme.com,_ from our friends at Client Company, provides top quality products..
Best:
_Acme.com,_ from our friends at Client Company, provides top quality _gizmos_, _gadgets_, _gew-gaws_, (etc., with each one linking to that specific interior page).
[...and the names of those product links should be *what your target audience is typing into search engines* not your own in-house jargon or special industry language.]
In sum, for the most complete and current info on search engine optimization, go to:
<http://www.searchenginewatch.com>
They have free info, and info you can only get if you pay for a subscription. Also some great forums there populated by people like you and me (trying to get our sites up there).
Also check out Google's info for webmasters:
<http://www.google.com/webmasters/>
... deals with what effects a site's ranking as far as Google is concerned...very useful.
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"Brilliant" InDesign Trick for Style Sheets
[Though it's an InDesign tip, this is from a post I sent to the QuarkXPress listserv. The original thread was about some of the members' experiences in moving to InDesign from Quark, and the message I replied to is partially quoted below. David Blatner's message follows my reply.]
Subscriber Post:
"Time will tell if CS will be productive -- but so far I'm very much liking the experience. It's harder to select successive objects in the stacking order, but the use of layers gives you some better control. Other than that, my two big gripes: character styles that aren't linked to paragraph styles and H&Js must be defined individually."
My Reply:
Re "character styles that aren't linked to paragraph styles": In Quark I usually just spec character formats by hand within the paragraph style sheet specs ... that is, I leave Character at Default and click the Edit button to make char-based settings. I only use Char style sheets for things like numbers, bullets, lead-ins etc.
Was I working with Quark's style sheets completely different than most people all these years? I'm curious.
But anyway... in InDy CS you *can* link Char style sheets to Par ones via Nested Styles...not really how they were meant to be used, I guess though.
In your Par Style Options dialog, add a New Nested Style, and choose the Character Style you want from the drop-down. For the next two fields, choose "up to" and "1". For the last field, where you specify a stop character (where the Char style should stop being applied), just spec something that doesn't exist in your story. For example, an Inline Graphic Marker or Auto Page Number.
Since InDy never encounters a stop character, the Char Style Sheet is applied (linked to) all the text in the Par Style sheet.
[To which David Blatner, best-selling author of a bazillion books on Quark and InDesign, who is also a Quark listserv subscriber, replied to the list with the following. Of course I *have* to share it, it made my day, geekwise:]
Anne-Marie, that's a brilliant technique for basing a paragraph style on a character style! Thank you.
[Yep. He called me brilliant. Or at least my tip brilliant, almost as good. Let me post it once again, in case you missed it ... along with the rest of his reply:]
Anne-Marie, that's a brilliant technique for basing a paragraph style on a character style! Thank you.
I did use this a lot in QX. The idea is that you can have five paragraph styles all based on the same character style... then, if you change that character style, it updates throughout the paragraph styles. It's very helpful in book and magazine work, I think, and something I definitely missed in ID.
You can do it in ID, but you do it by basing five paragraph styles on one other paragraph style. Not entirely the same thing, but it gets the job done.
best,
David Blatner
(typing like mad to get "real world indesign cs" out the door)
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Found: Elusive En Dash Keystroke in Windows QuarkXPress
In my last issue of DesignGeek (lucky #13, 1/14/04), I listed the Windows keystrokes for the most frequently-used special characters (bullets, em dashes, etc.) in QuarkXPress and InDesign.
While researching that article I couldn't find a keystroke for making an en dash in QuarXPress for Windows, and so wrote "none that I know of" next to the entry.
Shortly after I sent it out, I got two replies from DesignGeek subscribers telling me the keystroke. Weirdly, each supplied a different keystroke, and neither was correct (and follow-up with them confirmed it -- I thought maybe it was my Dell).
But that impelled me to look harder for it. After all, it makes no sense for Quark to have a keystroke for an em dash (Control- Shift-=) but not one for its shorter cousin.
Deep in the QuarkXPress v6 documentation for Windows, I found it (in the Glossary):
Control-Alt-Shift-[hyphen]
Note however, that this is a "non-breaking" en dash (so time ranges like 2002-2003, for example, won't break across lines). There is no keystroke for a breaking en dash, as there is for an em dash. To get an en dash to break -- not typographically correct, but sometimes necessary -- you'll need to follow it with a space (2002 - 2003).
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IS 2004 YOUR YEAR TO MASTER YOUR DOMAIN?
You can fully master the latest versions of OS X, Photoshop, InDesign, QuarkXPress, Illustrator, Acrobat, GoLive, and the rest of the designer's toolbox in far less time than you think! Just call in HerGeekness for an enjoyable session or two of targeted training (Mac or Windows) for you or your staff in the program of your choice -- starting at the level you're at, going to the level you want to attain, using the files you actually work with.
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Detailed information including pricing, student pix and unsolicited feedback are here:
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Phone: 312-946-1100
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DesignGeek is a free bimonthly publication written by Anne-Marie "HerGeekness" Concepcion, a cross-media designer and authorized Adobe and Quark training provider. She owns Seneca Design & Training, Inc. in Chicago, Illinois (http://www.senecadesign.com/).
To subscribe to DesignGeek or read archived issues, go to its home on Seneca's site: http://www.senecadesign.com/designgeek/subscribe.html.
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Contact Seneca by phone at 312-946-1100 or email at info@senecadesign.com
Copyright 2004 by Seneca Design & Training, Inc.
Please forward without cutting. Please contact Seneca for reprint permissions. We don't guarantee accuracy of articles. Company or product names mentioned in DesignGeek may be registered trademarks, we use the names in an editorial fashion with no intention of infringement.
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