Customer Reviews

Adobe(R) Illustrator(R) 7.0 Classroom in a Book

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

This book is the worst written of the series. It is vague about some steps, leaves out others, which can leave a beginner floundering and frustrated. It also assumes a fair bit of 'artistic' ability.It's good in that it can demonstrate some techniques very well, such a scaling - but it doesn't really help or encourage a beginner to 'get creative'. Which is the whole point of the application.

I really like this book. I think that the best way to start to learn a complex piece of software, like Pagemaker, is too get your feet wet using 'real world' exercises. And that is exactly what this book offers you.
It may be true that you do not always know exactly what you are doing when you step through the nice lessons in the book, because not every step is explained in detail, but that is not so important. When you have finished all the lessons, you know very well what Pagemaker has to offer, and you are ready to make your own brochures, letters, booklets, during which you will learn all the details of every Pagemaker feature using the help or a reference book. This book is not (and not meant to be) a reference book, use the Complete Reference or the Visual Quick Start guide instead, but it gets you started in a very good and pleasant way.
It may also be true that some fonts may not be present on the CD-Rom, but everyone who has used a computer once in a while must be able to locate them elsewhere (in Pagemaker's directory for instance!!!).
Last, but absolutely not least, this book shows you some very nice examples of well designed DTP publications, they will inspire you!
If you want to learn Pagemaker, do not hesitate, buy this book, it does what it promises.

It's true. I didn't know how to use Adobe PageMaker at all, then I ordered this book as a last resort before giving up completely. Guess what? It worked! I'm not real computer-nerd like myself, but I could certainly work the lessons in this classroom in a book. It is magnificant and doesn't get enough exposure!

I was impressed with this book at first. The step-by-step instructions to creating each project are easy to follow, yet they don't baby you along, either. Unfortunately, the party was over after finishing only two of the lessons. Problem is, Adobe/Peachpit Press [messed] up and forgot to include a few of the needed fonts on the CD-ROM that comes with the book. Therefore, you can't even do most of the lessons. Good luck getting help from Adobe or Peachpit. You'll come across little information, broken web links, and recorded messages and, in general, be ignored altogether. There are a lot of books out there to help you learn Pagemaker. Don't buy this one.

Unlike some of the other Adobe Classroom in a book guides, this one was a great disappointment. Most of the lessons leave out half of the steps required to get to the "final" result, which is pretty frustrating if you are a beginner to the program, like I was. Buyer beware.

I found myself very frustrated using this book. I kept going back as I thought I had missed something. For example, the author claims that all the needed fonts are included on the disk, but they are not, and without them, the examples do not look like they should. It is apparent that the book was not closely edited. REference is made to vertical rules when the action described must be a horizontal ruler! These types of errors make it very difficult for the novice to learn the application. Not that every thing is terrible, but when you spend hours because of omissions or mistakes trying to do what should only take a few minutes, it is frustrating. I do not recommend this book to anyone new to the application because unlike some of the reviewers, I do not know where to find the missing fonts. I also do not know enough about the application to know when I've followed the lessons and have gotten bad the results that it is not because I have made a mistake, but because the instructions were incomplete. So I found myself starting over and over again with the hope of getting it right. Frustrating!

If you're the sort who likes to buy software and then use it without consulting the manual you probably own a Mac. That's fine, because that is precisely what the folks at Apple wanted to produce, a computer that needs no manual!

Still, the software that goes on that Mac or on that manual-required-before-you-start Windows=driven PC can get downright ornery. And the accompanying manual is as confusing as some passages in the Bible!

If you're one of the rest of us and have bought an Adobe product, I advise you to get the Classroom In A Book tutorial. The book and accompanying cd are terrific for any new pagemaker user.

If you work for on on a newspaper, newsletter or magazine you also should get Publication Production Using Pagemaker. The two go great together.

Speaking for a novice user, I really do not recommend this book. Constantly reference to the User's Guide makes this Classroom in a Book a bad option for beginners and all of us, new users. Trying to take the learning more seriously and our money well spent should simply warn us from buying this book!

I have used PageMaker before starting with Version 6.0. I used an after market book "Teach Yourself PageMaker 6.0 in Twenty Four Hours" to learn it. Unfortunately they did not Publish the same book for 7.0. I had to brush up my PageMaker skills so I thought I would get Adobe's Publication "PageMaker 7.0 Classroom In A Book". To say the book is confusing is an understatement. The book gives you an estimated time that would be suffient to finish each lession usually two hours. All I can say to that is, In your Dreams! Try 3 to 4 hours. There is a set of mysterious fonts one of which is Birch thus the tittle of this review which certainly wasn't on the accompaning CD which is used through out the book. Has anyone ever found this mythical font. I was a good boy and loaded the fonts in Adobe Type Manager off of the CD and starting in lession 2 I didn't have the Birch font. Trusting soul that I am I loaded the CD back in the drive opened ATM and the birch font was nowhere to be found. If anyone has located it please tell me, I am sure it was one of things Adobe put in the book but not on the CD to drive users crazy, and for me that is a short trip.

Over all the content was good and the example give you a good overall feel of the product.

The first half of this book is an exact duplicate of the tutorials that come with the program. Only useful if you are a pirate, as if you purchased the program you already have it. The second half is filled with fairly lame overview tutorials that don't do much as far as real-world, professional techniques. Instead of the project oriented approach of the other Adobe Classroom In a Book titles (which are typically very good) this one just shows what a few of the tools do by letting you complete a half-way done task. This is definitely the worst of all the Classroom-In-A-Book titles. Save your money and buy The Illustrator Wow Book which provides a much more complete and professional treatment of this subject.