InDesign 3.0 CS Win

Ever since Adobe launched InDesign as a direct competitor to QuarkXpress, this high-end, professional desktop publishing application has been taking a growing market share. It's of particular interest to people who use other Adobe products, as it shares a similar interface and close ties to files generated by Photoshop and Illustrator.

Facilities you can take for granted in this application include comprehensive text and graphics layout tools, the inclusion of simple graphical shapes and easy ways to draw lines and rules. All the major design tools are in place and you can create reusable templates for entire documents or individual sections.

Longer document facilities are also well supported, where they weren't in some of the early versions. Full facilities for table of contents and indexing are provided and you can create and edit tables directly within the program, too.

As you would expect with a professional level application, there's excellent control of colour, with a process colour preview introduced to the first time in this version. This can save costly mistakes by enabling you to preview individual colour plates that will be produced from your pages when printing in four colours.

Also new is an integrated Story Editor. Working like a small word processor within InDesign, you can edit and style large quantities of text without having to zoom into text frames and edit on the page. This could help protect the eyesight of those who work with longer documents.

There are improvements too, to InDesign's handling of XML. If you're importing XML files you can use the program's support for Document Type Definitions to check for valid XML coding and if there are problems, to help fix them. You can also now map character styles, as well as paragraph styles, to XML tags.

Various rewrites of bits of the InDesign code have improved its performance and it's quite snappy, even on something like an 800MHz Pentium III. Although the sample documents Adobe supplies suggest its main market is in glossy, full colour ad design, it's now a pretty rounded program for most document types and a strong alternative to the market leader. --Simon Williams

TOP TEN FEATURES
Smooth workflow. Enjoy greater efficiency through even tighter integration with the other Adobe applications you use every day, including Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat, and GoLive.

Transparency. Apply editable drop shadows, feathering, and other transparency settings. Maintain soft edges when placing transparent Photoshop files.

Tables. Import styled Microsoft Word and Excel tables or tab-delimited text files, and then refine them with table formatting such as color fills in alternating rows.

Advanced typographical controls. Produce professional typography with ease using the Paragraph Composer, optical kerning and margin alignment, dynamic text preview, and other advanced type features.

Flexible workspace management. Take advantage of numerous workspace enhancements, such as the new Control palette and custom workspaces, to tailor your work environment to your needs.

Direct export of Adobe PDF files. Export Adobe Acrobat 6.0, 5.0, and 4.0 files directly from InDesign for electronic reviews and high-end printing. Maintain layers in exported Acrobat 6.0 files.

Unlimited undos. Experiment freely and retrace unlimited steps using the Undo and Redo commands.

Layers. Organize text and graphics on documentwide layers, and then quickly hide, lock, and reorder layers to efficiently manage your page elements.

Robust cross-media support. Publish content to multiple channels more easily with enhanced XML support.

Reliable printing. Get accurate, consistent results when you print using a streamlined interface, sophisticated preview capabilities, and other powerful printing features.