We are proud to announce today the BETA release of HurryCover 2 for InDesign CS4, CS5+, and CS6 (Mac/Win). This tool allows you to create perfectly sized hard covers or dust jackets which you can easily re-adjust the dimensions, the spine, the back and/or front flaps whenever you want. If the document needs to be updated according to new measurements, HurryCover automatically moves the layout components the required distance and ensures that guides and fold marks always fit the related dimensions. Feel free to bring below your feedbacks, reports, and ideas!

HurryCover 1 was a pretty rudimentary script intended for InDesign CS-CS3 users. It has provided them a valuable service for over five years but it had various issues and serious limitations. HurryCover 2 is a complete overhaul rewritten from scratch. It now requires InDesign CS4 or later to take advantage of the most advanced functionalities of the scripting environment, including GUI features:

HurryCover 2 User Interface (InDesign CS4 to CS6). Also available in French and German.

Getting Started with HurryCover 2

Basically, HurryCover is a book cover builder. You can use it to create hard cover templates, dust jackets or even leaflets. Run the script, type in the desired dimensions and just click Create:

HurryCover 2: Creating a new document.

HurryCover instantly generates a new document (single-page based) with all the required areas, guides and marks. Click the below sreenshot to have a closer look on these elements:

HurryCover 2: Page elements.

Once the template is created you can start designing the layout. HurryCover's guides and marks are placed on a locked layer named HC_GuidesAndMarks and located below any other so you don't have to worry about it during the design process:

Design the book jacket, HurryCover will do the rest…

If necessary, use Rotate the Spread View to specifically work on the spine area. (Note that HurryCover 2 can handle and update the dimensions of your jacket even if a rotated spread view is currently applied to the document.)

Designing the spine in Rotated Spread View.

Then, should you change the spine width or any other size (height, flaps width, finished width…), just re-run the script, type in the new dimensions and click Update:

Changing the spine width.

As a result, HurryCover re-adjusts all parts of the jacket considering the new measurements. For example, every object—frame, shape, guide—right or left of the spine move the required distance in the expected direction. Flaps are treated the same way. (You can even resize flaps independently, or simply remove a flap while keeping the other one.)

The graphic frame needs to be manually re-adjusted to the spine.

The only limitation of automatic repositioning is that a few objects may need to be individually resized after the process, due to the fact that more (or less) space is allocated to them. As showed above, this is typically the case of graphic frames that are supposed to cover or overlap the spine and part of the cover. Anyway, it is not very complicated to fix the width of such frames in InDesign:

Fixing the width of the main picture frame.

IMPORTANT NOTE [07/06/12]. — The final release of HurryCover 2 (i.e. the PRO version) will be smarter: when possible, it automatically keeps objects adjusted to fold guides.

Finally, export your document with your usual settings. If you include the bleed and slug areas, keep the document parameters. If HurryCover's custom crop marks are used, deactivate those drawn by InDesign. (All printer's marks and additional elements managed by HurryCover use the [Registration] swatch.)

Final exported PDF with all marks and extras.

Goodies

Particular attention was paid to the ergonomics and the usability of HurryCover 2. Let me focus on a few notable improvements:

Measurement Units Box. — By default, HurryCover displays measurement units according to the current InDesign ruler units. However, you can temporarily switch to another ‘display units’ from the main dialog. Simply click the corresponding button as showed below:

Measurement Units Box.

In addition, you can type in an explicit unit in any of the measurement edit fields to get the entered value automatically converted into the current display unit:

Unit conversion from a measurement edit field.

Indiscripts Menu. — Tired of continually triggering HurryCover from the Scripts Panel? Push the ‘Indiscripts Menu’ button on and close the dialog box. A new item labelled Indiscripts then appears in the InDesign's menu:

Indiscripts Menu.

Weblink. — Bottom right is an icon button that instantly loads the script's home page in your browser:

Link to the HurryCover's home page.

Localization. — HurryCover 2 BETA GUI is available in English (default), in French or in German, according to the InDesign locale.

Acknowledgements and credits

HurryCover 2 BETA would not have been possible without the valuable help and support from:

Dominique Chiron (doopix.com), who worked with me to design the new GUI—and to circumvent many ScriptUI flaws!

Jean-Christophe Courte (urbanbike.com), who is the “beta tester in chief” and without doubt the best ally of all my products.

Robert Kaltenbrunn (absatzsetzer.de), who is the guy behind the German localization of HurryCover.

I also specially thank, for countless reasons: Loïc Aigon, Laurent Tournier, Nicolas Pichou, Jean-Marc Bonnard, Eduardo Antunes, Norbert Congard, and Philippe Theophanidis.