Adobe has announced Adobe InDesign CS4 software, a major upgrade to
its professional page layout program. InDesign CS4 delivers new
features and enhancements that help increase productivity and
efficiency, streamline and automate long document creation and expand
output to new media, such as interactive PDFs or Adobe Flash files.

InDesign CS4 will be available as a stand-alone application or as a
component of Adobe Creative Suite 4 Design Premium and Standard
editions and Adobe Creative Suite 4 Master Collection.

“The advances and features central to InDesign CS4 enable customers
to produce inventive and high-impact layouts for online and offline
publishing,” says David Burkett, vice president of Creative Solutions
at Adobe. “As a result, InDesign CS4 allows publishers, design
agencies and other organizations to remain competitive through
design, enable business growth and attract new audiences through
multi-channel publishing, all while streamlining costs as a result of
productivity gains.”

Adobe InDesign CS4 introduces new features that enable smoother
workflows, productive collaboration, and reliable delivery of
interactive documents for online or offline publishing. The new Live
Preflight feature highlights potential production problems in
real-time from within the layout and directs users to the problem
area to resolve the issue, saving time and lowering production costs.
A customizable Links panel enables users to find, sort, and manage
placed files in a document, view attributes such as scale, resolution
and rotation — and identify files faster using thumbnails.

With this release, designers can combine the page layout strength of
InDesign with the interactive authoring power of Adobe Flash CS4
Professional to create rich, dynamic documents. Designers can export
an InDesign document as an XFL file and then open it in Adobe Flash
CS4 Professional to add sophisticated interactivity, animation, and
navigation for a more engaging online reading experience. Or,
designers can create interactive brochures, dynamic presentations,
and other online materials by adding page transitions, interactive
buttons, and hyperlinks to documents and then exporting them as SWF
files — for playback by the Adobe Flash Player — or interactive PDF
files.

InDesign CS4 includes new productivity enhancing features that make
it easier to create and manage long documents such as manuals and
textbooks. The new Conditional Text feature enables users to quickly
produce multiple versions of a document for different uses such as
multi-lingual documents or Teacher/Student materials. Designers can
apply conditions to selected paragraphs, words or characters and then
hide or show that text depending on the required context. Offering
further time-saving advances, the Cross-References feature simplifies
the writing, production and management of long form documents by
dynamically updating referenced text as content is changed or moved
within a document.

Adobe InDesign CS4 is at the center of the InDesign publishing family
that also includes Adobe InCopy CS4 and InDesign CS4 Server. This
line of products can be customized, scaled and extended to meet
evolving needs. As a stand-alone publishing platform or integrated
with an existing publishing system or content management tools, the
InDesign publishing family offers faster, more reliable performance
day in and day out than Creative Suite 3.

To solve specific workflow challenges, Adobe is introducing IDML
(InDesign Markup Language), an open, extensible XML representation of
InDesign documents that allows third-party developers and systems
integrators to programmatically create, modify and deconstruct
InDesign documents outside InDesign or InDesign Server — using
standard XML editing tools. The InDesign publishing family allows
traditional publishers, design agencies, and printers to add new
services and products to their portfolio of offerings, expanding
accessibility to professional looking print and digital materials.

Adobe InDesign CS4 and Adobe InCopy CS4 for Mac OS X on Intel based
and PowerPC based systems and for Microsoft Windows XP and Windows
Vista platforms are scheduled to ship in October 2008 with
availability through Adobe Authorized Resellers and the Adobe Store
at http://www.adobe.com/go/gn_store . Estimated street price for the
Adobe InDesign CS4 is US$699 and $249 for Adobe InCopy CS4. Adobe
InDesign CS4 Server will also be available to qualified Adobe
developer partners in the fourth quarter of 2008 with pricing
information available through qualified systems integrators. For more
detailed information about features, upgrade policies, pricing, and
International versions visit http://www.adobe.com/indesign