Adobe InDesign 1.5 Upgrade

Rating:
Summary: Good, User Friendly, Powerful but Slow. Oh, and pricey too.
Review: I have not yet tried QuarkXPress, so I can't comment on whether or not InDesign is better. I have, however, used InDesign 1.52, PageMaker 6.5 and Corel's Ventura 7. Of the three, I prefer InDesign.

In another review, I had said that Ventura was more user friendly but decidedly unstable, unforgivably causing me to lose text in some of the publications I was working on. Another knock against Ventura is that Corel seems to have abandoned the line. Version 8 is now over four years old, with no upgrade in sight.

InDesign likely finds itself in PageMaker's shadow, especially now that PageMaker v7 has been released. But InDesign was able to match the user-friendliness of Ventura with the stability and power of PageMaker, and I was most pleased with the result. InDesign could do dropcaps, without mucking about with text-frames as PageMaker does. What an innovation!!! (Ventura'd done it since version 5)

Unless Adobe changes direction and merges the PageMaker and InDesign lines into a single software package, the split appears to be that PageMaker is aimed at business publications, and InDesign is aimed at more artisticly minded publication houses. Neither are priced for the home user, and that's why I rate InDesign just four stars instead of five. The full version of InDesign is extremely costly, although the upgrade price is quite reasonable. If Adobe wants to prevent Microsoft Publisher from eating up more of the market, they'll cut the full price of the package significantly.

Best, James

Rating:
Summary: Good bye, QuarkXPress!
Review: No more cryptic codes, cumbersome commands or counter-intuitive interfaces. Thank you, Adobe!

I've used QuarkXPress for three years now for creating a variety of corporate communcations and marketing pieces. It took me about a year to become "comfortable" with QuarkXPress.

Out of curiosity, I tried a trial version of InDesign since I use other Adobe products (Acrobat, Photoshop and Illustrator.) I loved it... and I consider myself proficient in only a few days. It is one of the easiest applications I've ever used, but packs all the power of QuarkXPress. (Imagine, a simple right-click to add a (R) or (TM) symbol.)The flexibility and full integration with other Adobe products makes InDesign a winner! Also, Adobe color management results in some of the best soft proofs I've ever seen.

I'm never going back to CrypticXpress.