Customer Rating:  
Summary: For the best experience start at the beginning
Comment: For the best experience with this book, start at the beginning, even before you try to start using the program. Then you can use the book as a sort of a home study course. If you are all ready into the program, it can be hard to find specific information you may need. But when you do find the information, sitting down with the book and the program is very useful.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Helpful, But Not Too Helpful
Comment: If you've never used an Adobe product before, or have trouble using computer programs in general, this book will be very helpful. Otherwise, this book contains about 50% helpful information and 50% useless information. The book is filled with minutiae that is not specific to desktop publishing. My guess is that most readers want to learn about the special features and hidden techniques that will help them produce better layouts, not about how to open and save a file.
To give an example, Chapter 13 is devoted entirely to teaching readers how to search and find text within a document, and how to use a spell-checker. Is that really necessary?
It's a bit frustrating to see "this is an expert feature that is beyond the scope of this book" every ten pages, but there is a lot to be learned from reading the book. If you're a complete beginner you will be taught good habits, such as creating layers and object styles, which will save time and lead to well-organized documents in the future. Just be prepared to spend a lot of your time reading about things that you already know how to do.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Dummies for dummies
Comment: I had hoped to get an overview of Indesign that would take me through the process of opening the file, establishing parameters, and doing a basic layout. Instead, this book takes you through endless detail before you even get to importing text and pictures. I have used other publishing programs so I am not a novice but this book is no easy guide to Indesign. It is best used if you have a specific question and need to find a specific answer but even then you may find that topic is not addressed. You might as well save your money and use the on-line manual.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Incredibly helpful!!!
Comment: I had a bit of base knowledge about InDesign when I started this book, but very little. There a few places where I am still unable to follow what the author is teaching, but overall it's really fantastic. I got through the bulk of the book in about a week and have created three marketing publications for a few very sizable companies in the last few weeks.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Another glorified user manual
Comment: This book is basically a glorified user manual. I've actually made it through the first third of the book and have learned nothing. I realize the "Dummies" series is supposed to put everything in layman's terms, but they could have assumed anyone buying this book would know how to open a file. The book just goes on and on about each little control, widget, function, menu and click in InDesign, yet doesn't give any examples of work that can be produced with these controls. I'm returning this book for a refund and will search for something else that depicts practical working examples. This book is written in the same "user manual" style of "Photoshop CS2 Bible" and I found that book to be really useless, too.
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