Customer Reviews

Adobe® InDesign® 2.0 Classroom in a Book

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

My review of this book echoes those before me insofar as the typos are concerned. I am transitioning over to InDesign from Pagemaker and thank goodness I know Adobe products as well as I do. In the first 25 pages there are over 5 major errors that cost time. They misnumber their example pages (ie: see page 3 but the picture they show is actually of page 2) to telling you the wrong menu to select (Go to type>text wrap, when in reality the text wrap command is under window>text wrap) Since I have a good knowledge of Adobe, I can overcome this, but if you are not mostly familiar with adobe's interfaces through photoshop, pagemaker, etc, this IS NOT THE BOOK FOR YOU. I love a lot of the CIB books too, but this one is a miserable experience. Hope they get a new editor before they lose more readers. Plus, once you open the classwork CD you can't return the book. Don't make my mistake!

I'm a really big fan of the classroom in a book series, so I bought the book despite other reviewers warnings of errors in the book. I'll confirm that the book had errors, sometimes annoying ones. The technical mistakes divide the book's useful customer base in half. If you feel you have enough software/Adobe experience to recognize when the book is wrong, then I'd still recommend this book, as the format of CIAB is great. If you're newer to professional software, and think you'll be thrown into disarray when the book instructs you to do something that doesn't work - then this may not be a good purchase. I'm glad I bought the book, as I now know how to use InDesign.

I am a designer that is completely self educated. I have found in my 3 years of study that the books I most enjoy are the step by step lesson/ tutorial books. Now I know some people have complained that this book doesn't deliver the goods, but I am here to say that it does and more. It shows you how to use each aspect of InDesign 2 and how you can apply it to real world use. The problem that I have with books like Visual Quickstart books is that they say: " This tool does this and this is how you get this," but if you're a new designer you don't know what things are or what a "Pull Quote" is or for. That is why I stick to these step by step books. They explain the what and the why of what you're doing so you can apply it to your real world work. My complements to Adobe on a JOB WELL DONE~!

I am not a computer expert. I purchased InDesign Classroom in a book because I knew it would go step by step. Unfortunately there are fonts needed that are not on the disk (i.e. Adobe Garamond Pro, Graceless...?) Making a substitution does not always work. There are too many errors in the book. The biggest problem is trying to find an e-mail question site.

This is a great book, but it is littered with typos. My wife is using it to learn InDesign and has little DTP experience and is constantly being confused with mistaken directions. The illustrations supplied often to not match the given directions.

This book would be better for someone who is familiar with say, QuarkXPress and could easily tell whether the book is giving mistaken information.

The book is loaded with detail and could be an excellent teaching aid if someone had bothered to check it 100%. Advice for the novice desktop publisher... don't buy this book.

Adobe make a lot of great software for which they can never tell anyone in a straightforward fashion how to use, except for a few well hidden bulletins that you might happen to chance upon on their web-site. To compound this problem they insist on creating their quite expensive `Classroom in a Book series, which, although nicely designed and printed on quality materials, don't really tell you much more than is already available in the application's Help Guide, which, if persevered with, makes the CIB issue a bit superfluous.

This book would be just about acceptable for Photoshop Elements, since it's an application not intended to be used in professional circumstances. Indesign 2.0, however, is, and is also pretty expensive. Okay you can quickly get the hang of the basics with some prior experience of PageMaker and the Help Guide, but this application really needs to be explained by someone such as Thomas Neuburger who did such a nice job for FrameMaker 6.0: an application that Indesign 2.0 is supposed to be head-to-head with.

Adobe really need to get a grip and desist from treating their high-end products as little more than glorified frivolities for customers with deep pockets. It makes for dissatisfaction, and a lack of any appreciation as to how much better their products are in relation to less expensive alternatives, that only do basic things.

If the authors had bothered to proofread and actually test things out, this could have been just as good as the other CIB texts, such as those for PageMaker and Acrobat. Instead, I have to constantly check my Visual Basic book for which button/pulldown etc. REALLY performs the function I need, thus wasting valuable time.

I hope sincerely that the next book is edited and that someone actually TESTS it out before sending it off to the printer.

some frustrating typos but the lessons are helpful
towrds filling in your knowledge gaps. like most
adobe software InDesign has enough flexibility and
complexity, subtracted a star due to the typos.
there are CIB references that are better done. I
am waiting for Real World InDesign 2 to see if that's
better

Thsi book covers everything you need to know about InDesign and gives you examples. Once again teh CIB books come through

My first college course in the printing arts utilized a Classroom in a Book-type book. Learning from it (as well as this book) is easy with the step-by-step instructions and illustrations to guide you.

I recommend these types of books for anyone who is seriously interested in learning Adobe applications.