If you’ve pre-ordered Communicating Design, the books should be shipping soon, according to the publisher. You can find details on CommunicatingDesign.com. Thank you for your patience!

At the Adaptive Path blog, Dan Saffer and I have a conversation about our upcoming books.

First: read Part One of the interview.

Then: buy his book.

Finally: buy my book.

You won’t be sorry!

I’m putting this here for myself as much as anyone else. If you want the width of your shape to adjust depending on the amount of text in it, put this formula in the WIDTH field of the ShapeSheet:

=MAX(TEXTWIDTH(TheText),8*Char.Size)

Note that if you drag a shape handle, the shape will no longer behave this way. It’s best to protect the shape’s width to prevent losing this behavior.

Update: This is better:

=GUARD(MAX(TEXTWIDTH(TheText),.25))

The GUARD function prevents users from adjusting the width of the shape with the shape handle. Using .25 means that the shape will always be at least a quarter inch wide, instead of a function of the character width. You can change this constant to whatever minimum you want. Alternatively, remove the MAX() function altogether and the shape matches the width of the text regardless.