Preface

I've spent nearly 20 years working with page-layout software, heading one of the first efforts by a national magazine to go from traditional tools to electronic ones in 1986. Over the years , I've also reviewed all the page-layout tools for various magazines, including InfoWorld and Macworld. For the first five years, I felt that Ventura Publisher was the best page-layout program available, and in the 1990s, I judged QuarkXPress to be the best. During that time, I saw PageMaker sink into irrelevance because of neglect by Adobe and, more recently, I saw QuarkXPress follow a similar path of complacency. So I was excited in 1999 by the first version of InDesign but disappointed that it had several drawbacks that could have been avoided considering it came so many years after Ventura Publisher, PageMaker, and QuarkXPress had addressed most users' needs. The promise was strong, but the product was still very rough around the edges. Users saw that and didn't widely adopt InDesign. Version 2 corrected many of the deficiencies, and user adoption of InDesign accordingly skyrocketed in 2002.

Four years after that first version of InDesign was released, my disappointment is gone. Adobe has made InDesign CS ‚ version 3 of the program ‚ as strong as ‚ and in many cases stronger than ‚ QuarkXPress. Although QuarkXPress does a few things that InDesign does not, there are more things that InDesign does that QuarkXPress does not.

It's been a good decade ‚ there has been serious competition in the desktop publishing world, and InDesign is clearly the ascending tool for publishers today. Whether InDesign supplants QuarkXPress is irrelevant ‚ what matters is that layout artists have an incredibly powerful tool in the form of InDesign to let them deliver on their creative aspirations and vision. I can only hope that this book helps you achieve those ambitions.

Acknowledgments

Freelance writers and layout artists John Cruise and Kelly Kordes Anton contributed significantly to the previous edition of this book, and this edition incorporates many of those contributions.

Thanks to the development and product marketing staff at Adobe for providing early versions of the InDesign CS software and listening to suggestions on making it even better. And thanks to the editors and production staff at Wiley Publishing for their efforts in making this book possible, especially to project editor Elizabeth Kuball and technical reviewer Jonathan Woolson for their improvements to the book's content and clarity.

The www.INDDcentral.com Web site and its contents are copyrighted by The Zango Group.

The Adobe Open Options user guides and FAQs were designed by BayCreative LLC and copyrighted by Adobe Systems Inc. The IT Wireless Essential Products Guides was designed by Galen Gruman and copyrighted by EmergeMedia Inc. The YMCA of Oakville brochure examples were designed by Branimir Zlamalik of Gb.com and copyrighted by the YMCA of Oakville, Ontario. The Jackson County (Ore.) Library Foundation brochure is designed and copyrighted by designer Shawn Busse of Kinesis. The In the Footsteps of Paul workbook is designed and copyrighted by Ronald Lanham. The Zango Group marketing collateral examples are copyrighted by The Zango Group. Original photographs are copyrighted by their photographers.

All materials are used by permission.