Don't upload your InDesign file! That would make it inaccessible for everyone who hasn't got your version of InDesign, or your personal custom plug-ins (if any), or your current set of fonts. Export to a PDF; and if you happened to use a lot of bitmap images, use the “Low quality for screen” preset. Then put it on an external server, such as yousendit, and post the URL in here.

.. where it does hyphenate, it will break in very odd places, not standard US english breaks ..

First thing to check is if the langauge applied to your text is, in fact, US English. This sounds like the text is set to another language.

My CS4 always shows this warning when I try to export a document with effects and have the “Interactive” checkbox checked. That's why I never click any of the “Never Show Again” checkboxes — “I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?”

You might have clicked the Don't Bother Me checkbox sometime long ago; but then again, it also might have changed in CS5, and it just doesn't warn you anymore.

The dialog contains a tip on how to prevent this: try changing the Acrobat compatibility setting.

Does that sample comes with scripting support?

From Adobe's “Scripting Your Plug-in” PDF (*):

? Script provider: InDesign service provider that registers as a script service and reports the objects they support, as well as the supported events and properties on each object. It also provides an implementation to find a script object, get and set its properties, and execute its methods.

(*) Admittedly, the one for InDesign 2.0 plugins — from 2001. But the system in general didn't change, the past decade or so, so the documentation for your current version may come with an example on how to set it up.

Doesn't Alt+Pg Up/Down browse through spreads, rather than pages? That ought to keep both pages visible at all times.

(And if holding down a modifier key bothers you, you can change the shortcut to use 'plain' Pg Up/Down.)

Doesn't Alt+Pg Up/Down browse through spreads, rather than pages? That ought to keep both pages visible at all times.

(And if holding down a modifier key bothers you, you can change the shortcut to use 'plain' Pg Up/Down.)

You cannot change the opacity of layers in InDesign, you'll have to select the objects instead, and change those.

Well, yes, yes, and yes. (I think.) The only “no” I'd suggest is on saving as JPEG. [a]

If you reduce the size of an image in InDesign, you are automatically increasing its resolution. On exporting, InDesign may decide the resolution gets ridiculously high — default is above 450 dpi — and automatically downsample it to its default of 300 dpi. Therefore, it really doesn't matter if you downsample it yourself to 300 dpi, or let ID do it for you.

Downsampling does “degrade” the image quality, because it needs to throw away actual data. However, if the resolution after downsampling is still sufficiently high for your intended output target (print?), the degradation is not visible at all.

[a] Given a choice, you're better off saving as PSD. If you save as JPEG — even using the highest possible quality –, its compression introduces artifacts. That kind of artifacts is most visible when using the lowest quality (try it!), and they may very well be invisible at 300 dpi. But if you decide the image doesn't look right, open it again in PS, adjust something and save it again as JPEG, the amount of artifacts increase. Do it a couple of times, and it gets worse every time. PSD uses a lossless compressed format, so it doesn't suffer from this.