Apple Reviews

Looking at the reviews I see that these are over a year old, and someone needs to note that Quark does run natively on OSX at this point, so why would you spend just about the same money on InDesign? The concept is cool, but I found it awkward to use, and certainly not something I could bump into my workflow without problems. Some of the printers we use do not accept the InDesign files for output. If you are on the other end and looking for a program to learn, to add the skill to your resume, do your self a favor, and get Quark. I've not seen any design or production positions open with InDesign as a requirement, but Quark is always a necessity.

Adobe's inDesign is poised to take over the page layout market for OSX, as Quark is too busy resting on its laurels to publish a native version. I like inDesign, with it's familiar Adobe set-up and compatibility between popular programs...but inDesign is not perfect.

The main problem I have with inDesign is that it's painfully slow on my G3 Pismo PowerBook. I used Quark as both a word processor and for page layout, but inDesign cannot be used as a word processor on my system. Paragraphs of any length become difficult to edit as the computer lag to update the formatting is absolutely unacceptable.

I've come to writing my text in TextEdit and then cutting and pasting the final result. However, if I find typos in proof-reading, it's actually faster to edit the TextEdit version and then, once again, cut and paste it back in to inDesign.

That's terrible.

I'm also not a fan of the way inDesign does not automatically create new pages with text frames if your text flows over. In Quark it's automatic, based on the Master pages, but in inDesign, there's some manual clicking that needs to take place.

It's awkward and counter-intuitive.

If you're going to lay out a magazine on OSX, this is really the only way to go. My wish is inDesign 3 will have my issues resolved, but even if they are, that doesn't help my current frustrations. If not, they're leaving a tiny space open for Quark to get back in to the race.

My favorite features in InDesign 2.0?

Creating baseline grids (to keep your columns of text aligned) is incredibly easy.

A Glyph palette for browsing and inserting any glyph in a font, and a shortcut menu for quickly inserting special characters.

Character Styles to augment Paragraph styles.

OpenType Fonts can contain up to 65,000 characters and you can tell InDesign to automatically substitute swash characters, ligatures, ordinals, fractions, etc., as you type. You don't have to do all the work of using a different face for ligatures and swash characters, saving tons of time.

Multiple undo/redo and automatic recovery of documents after a system or power failure.

Transparency Easily apply drop shadows, feathering, and other opacity settings within InDesign. No more going back to a source file's application for that. Soft edges are maintained when placing transparent Photoshop files! Also maintain transparency in imported Illustrator files, as well as Acrobat 5.0 PDF files.

Text on a Path Align text on a path in few quick steps, and apply special effects, such as Ribbon and Gravity.

Tables are easy to create in InDesign. And you can, import styled Microsoft© Word and Excel tables directly, or turn tab-delimited text files into tables in one step. Quickly reformat the look and feel of tables: Set row height and column width, apply color fills to alternating rows, merge cells, insert graphics, and specify high-end typographical settings.

Importing PDF files is simple. You can choose exactly how it comes in and re-size the PDF for paste up in the document.

InDesign no longer requires the AdobePS driver, so it fits into a wider variety of print work flows, and it offers a consistent cross-platform experience. New printing features include the ability to save high-quality, driver-independent PostScript© files directly from the print dialog box; the ability to print master pages,

Preflighting/packaging controls-I was able to identify problems with linked graphics, fonts, and colors in my InDesign documents using built-in preflighting controls. Then I can use it to package all required files, including the necessary fonts, for hand-off to print production.

Paragraph Composer and Optical Kerning let me fine tune the look of words, paragraphs and columns for high quality typography..

What do I miss in InDesign?

I wish there was a Story Editor that allowed me to view an entire story at once, even if it was threaded across several pages. That's really valuable when I need to cut or rearrange an article for fit.

I would like a palette to adjust the size of a font or its leading or the weight of a stroke up or down in tenth of a point increments by clicking on something or using my up and down arrows. InDesign's character palette's little arrows adjust by a full point only. To adjust by fractions of a point, I have to change to the text tool, click in the boxes and type the exact number.

Final Verdict?

InDesign is a Superior Product for Designers. It saves you from jumping around in other programs to perform tasks, and its typography controls have no match.

I've been in design and publishing for six years. I've had to use Quark because Macromedia never made anything better, Pagemaker was a joke, and Illustrator didn't do multiple pages. Quark is quirky. The best thing about InDesign is that if you use Illustrator it's very easy to pick up. It's a little pricey, but if you're doing high end publishing it's a must. I've gotten away with doing this type of work in Freehand, which let's you do multiple pages, but the press sheets are better here.

The original version had a lot of quirks, but 1.5 is better.

Since the new upgrade (free on the website) makes InDesign useful for non-postscript printer owners, I decided to give it a whirl, and now wonder how I survived without it. Document layout is intuitive, and easy--the addition of layers, and the ability to link photoshop files in native format are awesome! I also like how I can crop and resize graphics in the program, without getting pixelation because it goes back to my original files. I'm so pleased with how it works and how easy it is to use that I've pretty much said good-bye to Microsoft Word forever. I compose and lay-out in one easy program, and get tons of compliments on how great my documents look.

Even though this is still a 1.5 version, InDesign is really a must purchase piece of software for the print publishing professional. I haven't set type this beautiful since I was forced to toss my old CompuGraphic phototypesetter.

This is software where Adobe really listened to the pros and made us an application that we can really use. I think it blows Quark out of the water. It contains almost all of Illustrator, so you can really just add FreeHand for vector necessities that are not covered in InDesign like blends, Flash exports, attaching blends to paths, and the path combination filters like Union, Punch, divide, and transparency.

It is still missing such necessities as a story editor, table of contents, tables, and indexing. But they are available as plug-ins now and hopefully Adobe will listen to its customers and add a lot of these things in version 2.

You need to buy it now, get it under your belt, so you are not left in the dust as Adobe pulls out in front.

...multi-line justification, gradient strokes, customizable shortcuts, four justified options (quad left, right, centered and full), flush spaces, parent/child master pages, hanging punctuation (including letters like A and V), drag'n'drop color, and the list goes on...

I've been using Illustrator for over three years now... from 9.0 to 10.0 and now CS. While Illustrator does seem to perform faster and it does include the ability to create 3-D objects (which is pretty neat), I was very disappointed with one particular thing. The text now does not display as it should while I'm working on my artwork. Some of my fonts seemed to "bleed", while other fonts just weren't displayed correctly (the height and/or width seemed off). When I print or save the art for the web the results look as they should, but it's really annoying that I can't truly see what the text is going to look like unless I print or view the jpeg/gif file. I'm seriously considering going back to version 10. Not only does it display my artwork exactly as I should expect to see it printed or on the web, but now Flash MX 2004 (another recent upgrade) has supposedly been made to be compatible with Illustrator 10.

Adobe's new Illustrator CS brings significant improvements to an already great vector art software. I was quite impressed with Illustrator 10's improvements, and wasn't sure what new features Adobe would put into its next version. Plenty, as it turns out. Here are some new features of Illustrator CS (actually v. 11):

Faster Performance
Illustrator CS is noticeably faster opening, saving, and printing files than its predecessor Illustrator 10. Artwork displays faster, and copying and pasting is speedier.

Expanded Print Capabilities
With Illustrator CS' upgraded print engine you can now achieve fast, consistent, print results with features like Fit to Page, Print Preview, and support for Print settings. These features appear to put Illustrator CS on par with Adobe Acrobat in regard to setting file compression and printing control.

Font Style Display
In its drop-down Font selection menu, Illustrator CS now shows fonts available in your Mac in their actual style. No more guessing how they might look before you select from a list of font names.

Enhanced Adobe PDF file creation
When saving an Illustrator CS document as a PDF file a menu now displays settings and options that are quite similar to Adobe Acrobat Distiller software. This allows making precise adjustments for file compression, adding printer's marks, and setting PDF document security. A convenient feature is that newly created Illustrator PDF's are then auto-launched in Acrobat 6 for immediate review.

Adobe PDF layers support
Similar to PhotoShop, Illustrator lets artwork be created over numerous electronic layers with individual control of the contents contained on each layer. That's not particularly new, however, layered artwork in Illustrator CS saved as a PDF can now be displayed or hidden within Adobe Acrobat 6.0 Professional.

How might this be useful? One example could be that you need to e-mail a drawing to a client showing multiple design options for a building drawn on different layers in Illustrator. The client won't likely have Illustrator, but will have a copy (or can get a free download) of Acrobat Reader 6. With a multi-layer PDF file the client can turn on, or off, layers to display your different design options.

3D Effects
I love this new feature! From 2-D objects and text you can create custom 3-D shapes and type treatments, add lighting, and then wrap artwork around shapes for packaging mock-ups. The new 3-D features incorporate elements of Adobe's long abandoned Dimensions 3.1 which, while promising, was clunky and rather frustrating to use.

Prior to Illustrator CS, I usually created 3-D static objects by first importing a very basic Illustrator EPS drawing into an expensive 3-D animation program. From there I would perform an Extrude (adding depth to the object) or a Lathe (wrapping the EPS drawing around a center line), rotate the object to a desired angle in the XYZ planes, position the artificial light source(s), and then map artwork to the various surfaces to create the finished product. Now I can do all of that in Illustrator CS. Thank you, Adobe! I'll be interested to see how this feature matures in future versions of Illustrator.

Illustrator's 3-D features come with a price, however. Running this program on my 15", 800 Mhz, G4 iMac required patience as each time a 3-D object was moved or resized on the electronic canvas there was a finger-drumming wait for the vector recalculations to complete. Of course faster Macs (especially the G5's) will mean less wait time with Illustrator 3-D objects.

Video Tour Of New Features
Included with Illustrator CS is a very informative CD video tutorial from Total Training featuring well-known software book author and presenter Deke McClelland. He jumps right into explaining the 3-D features of Illustrator CS, followed by tutorials on the program's built-in filters, font features, printing controls, and exports to PDF and Microsoft Office.

Tighter Microsoft Office integration
When you choose "Save for Microsoft Office" under the File Menu, Illustrator CS exports artwork as a PNG file format which makes it optimized to print and display in Microsoft Office products. Frankly, I'm not so impressed with this feature-but it's probably not Adobe's fault.

Of the applications in the Microsoft Office application suite I use PowerPoint the most. Inserting a PNG (or other raster formats) is fine as long as the background in Word, Excel, or PowerPoint is white. In these Microsoft products all pixel-based images display with a white square or rectangular bounding box-no matter the actual shape of the artwork. In PowerPoint you can use Microsoft's "Set Color Transparency" command to make the unwanted white of the bounding box become transparent so the background shows through. Unfortunately, there remains a white "fringing" all around the artwork boundary.

If Illustrator had a vector graphic export format that would be the same as the vector clip art Microsoft provides for use in its Office products, you would really have something. Vector art from Illustrator, brought into MS Office software, could be scaled up or down in size with no change in resolution. Now that would be a great feature. As it currently stands, you can put a piece of vector art into the Microsoft Clip Art Gallery. But when the artwork is inserted the MS application forcibly rasterizes it with some unwanted results.

Save As Template Command
Illustrator CS lets you reuse designs by saving files as templates that include artboard dimensions, styles, symbols, layers, and more. There are also more than 200 professionally designed templates and over 100 OpenType fonts in addition to clip art and stock photographs - all included free on the installation CD.

Adobe states that Illustrator CS for Macintosh requires a PowerPC G3, G4, or G5 CPU, OS X v.10.2 through v.10.3, 192MB of RAM (256MB recommended), and 470MB of available hard-disk space. For this review, Illustrator CS performed on a G4 800 MHz iMac with 1 GB of memory, running OS 10.2.8.

Tom Shackle is a member of the Alaskan Apple Users Group and a freelance media professional

The saying, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions" is epitomized in this program. Adobe attempted to add a plethora of tools a designer might want. In fact, I think the program would work great for web design if it weren't so buggy. For print, it's just as bad as 9 was and 9 was VERY BAD.
I tried to use it for a couple weeks, but I had to get some work done so I'm back in 8. I hesitated to buy 10 because 9 was such a bomb, but hope springs eternal; I thought they would surely not release two duds in a row. I will buy 11 just because I hate to be so far behind, but it better be better.

I've been a user since the first beta, and things don't look good for Illustrator. The marketing people have been in charge for way too long, and now it is impossible to tell just what this program is supposed to do! It does nothing well. To this "industry standard" (in EXACTLY the way Lotus 123 was sold as "the indusrtry standard" for the last three useless versions), Adobe continues to add a scattering of confused features and tricks, while ignoring years old problems with Illustrator. At this point, the new 'web' features that started flooding in with version 7 have overwhelmed any sense of planning or design., and have caused no end of problems for its print users. One can use 'transparency features' to create neat drop shadows (not suitable for print work as they force the vector work to pixelate before printing is possible), but one still cannot handle multiple pages, master documents, or even file linking in any but the most rudimentary way. While faster than some past versions, there must be SOME reason that Adobe, the people who invented PostScript, produce the absolute slowest PostScript file creator in the field. The only program slower to write a file is InDesign - also by Adobe.

MacroMedia Freehand stepped way ahead of this product 4 or 5 versions ago and has never looked back. The only real benefit to Illustrator is its excellent ability to interpret and edit many .eps files. But a file converter is hardly worth the price.

Illustrator is NO longer a decent prepress tool, and has not been since version 7. It has such a hodge podge of conflicting and incompatible 'features' that I wonder what it IS suited for.

Unless Adobe gets some focus back to it's software, photoshop and GoLive will be the only decent products they make. (and GoLive was purchased as a good thing - who knows where it will be in a year or two).

Having been a working user since Illustrator 5.0, I've seen a great deal of changes in this fine design and production program. Adobe was in my opinion at their pinnacle with release 8.0. Version 9 added transparency effect, but it seemed to drag on the OS (9.x), and one huge change that was unnoticed by most designers, put a huge thorn in the side of those working in print or production: Adobe changed their post script management in the exporting of most files to be ripped from post script, to .pdf. This caused a myriad of problems in the rip world, where the "new and improved" format would not rip, or caused serious rip problems, with images needed embedding (doubling or tripling the final file size), or other work arounds. Hence, many of us never used verion 9.0.

Now comes Version 10. This version has the beautiful aqua interface, is much faster than version 9, and a lot of designers will love it for that. Have the problems been fixed? Well, no. As a matter of fact, some are worse. .eps files saved out of 10 as version 8.0 (to hopefully rip better) causes placed files to appear as fragmented, embedded, unnamed, files, causing a total re-design. Files with transparency often rip as solid blocks, or have Pantone colors fall out when used as transparency. While one could argue this is a problem with the rip, it's not the best business ethic to let your customers (production users) have to deal with these hassles, when they should have been ironed out between Adobe and other (rip) software manufacturers. Another feature that appeared in 9.0 is still useless: Automated (batching) actions. Illustrator 10 wants to name every single file the same as the file used in the writing of the action. Making what could be a huge, huge time saver for production works, totally useless. There are also network security issues, where OSX wants to hide AI 10 files when saved to a Windows based server. Adobe also missed the boat in that the save window doesn't allow anything other than the power user window in OSX, and won't allow collumn width adustments. Again, this may all be Apple, (or Windows). But I say iron these issues out before releasing the software and charging users for it, and letting them deal with the headaches.

But before I create a huge laundry list of things wrong with the program, Illustrator does deserve some praise. It's the best looking version to date, that isn't even close. It also makes jumping into basic design easier than ever. And it has many, many web friendly features. Most any designer out there working on basic (or complex) logos, designs and illustrations will find AI 10, for OSX to be the best version to date. So you're likely to see a lot of 5-star reviews from those users.

Bottom line: If you're a designer working in OSX, this is a much faster, and nicer version than 9. But a lot of production workers who use Illustrator day in and day out for print export and rip are going to find the program still has several problems that make it very difficult to use in a production environment.

[I should note that when I say "rip" I am not talking about rasterizing files in Photoshop, but instead using programs such as Cheetah, Color Burst, Autoflo, or Onyx. Industry standards.]

Illustrator is probably the BEST product around for anyone seriously creating drawings and artwork on a computer. It packs in all the usual features, Bezier curves, color models, line and artwork control, and it has dozens of nifty new features. These include a powerful macro facility (direct or via Applescript), a rubber stamp like "symbol" facility, artistic styles that can be applied to surfaces, filtering "effects", gradient meshes for creating shaded surfaces, and the ability to define your own keyboard shortcuts.

Yes, it has a serious learning curve. No, it is not a paint program. Yes, it has some flaws and a few bugs. No, you still have to have some artistic ability to use it.

I've tried Freehand, Expression, Corel Draw and several other rivals. They are not bad programs, but they lack the completeness, the immediacy, and the sense of control that you get in Illustrator. If you are serious, you would be hard pressed to do better.

Seeing as the other "review" here is not particularly helpful or easy on the eyes, I figured I'd write a brief one of my own that will hopefully be useful to someone. :)

Illustrator is, simply, an extremely powerful piece of software. It has some amazing features, both in terms of power and in terms of usability. There are multiple ways to do just about everything, depending on what suits your style of working. You could also spend hours customizing the interface and setting things up the way you like (this could be a pro or a con, depending on how much you value your productivity).

While Illustrator gets high marks for raw power, there is one area where Adobe needs to improve it: stability. I've experienced a few crashes running it under Mac OS X, often while doing very simple operations (i.e. switching between Illustrator and another running task). Illustrator is not multitasking friendly, from my experience. It also doesn't seem to take very good advantage of having a dual processor machine, which is a bit of a shame.

Honestly, though, the stability issues are not enough to warrant less than 5 stars for Illustrator. You can do some amazing stuff with this software, given enough time to learn how to harness all the tools... and given the creative talent to do them justice. Artistic ability not included. :)

THEY HAVE ADDED PROCESSES TO THIS VERSION WILL MAKE ADJUSTMENTS WITHOUT HAVING TO GO BACK AND FORTH TO PHOTOSHOP...

I'm a GoLive user from way back, when the product was called CyberStudio and the company that wrote it was called GoLive (before Adobe bought them out). GoLive got me through my early days of web design, when I wasn't interested in learning html code, and I got some pretty good, basic interactive web sites published. The previous version (6) was quite good, but for me has some toolbar display glitches that were never fixed, and pretty lame CSS (cascading style sheet) support. As a loyal Adobe customer (I mean sucker), I forked out the steep one-seventy for this upgrade CS version of GoLive, hoping to be free of those version 6 display glitches and to be able to use CSS as I have been doing in other sites using Dreamweaver MX. Well, after installing the GoLive CS upgrade I am extremely disappointed with this release. Not only are there currently a miriad of other display glitches, problems updating earlier version site files, code errors, slow freezes, crashes and other bugs, which Adobe have yet to fix, I find their new CSS features to be overly complex. Despite what the Adobe marketing hype says, the Layout View does not always display CSS styles as they will look in a web browser, which leads to even more frustration and confusion when trying to style a page.

If you're using GL6, and want to upgrade, at least wait for the bug-fixing 7.01, but also check indendent product reviews first, such as MacWorld's Feb 04 review, and the Adobe GoLive user discussions page (www.adobeforums.com) to see what problems other people are having. If you are looking for a new 'wysiwyg' web layout program, go with Macromedia's Dreamweaver instead. I'm a total convert, and their Contribute program is excellent software that your clients can use to update and maintain their own sites.

Macworld Buying advice summary (of this CS version) says... But while the program offers many advanced features for bulding and managing web sites, it's lackluster support for current CSS techniques and its sometimes complex and overwhelming interface are serious drawbacks."

Other Adobe CS apps like Illustrator and Photoshp are remarkable, refined products. GoLive CS Upgrade is a dud, right out of the box. I call it the GoDead Downgrade!

Amazon can I get my money back? Anyone want a used copy?

I've been using GoLive since it was called Cyberstudio and owned by another company. I therefore rushed to buy this update and was utterly shocked when I got home.

GoLiveCS does not have the built in support for dynamic content that was in the previous version (6.0). The PHP/Mysql/asp interface for creating database driven websites is totally gone! Apparently Adobe thought no one was using it so they axed it. Let me tell you, as one of the ones who was using it, this has rendered this "upgrade" into a "downgrade" that I would never have bought had I known. Unfortunately, neither the store I bought it at nor Adobe will refund my money.

I've gone back to 6.0. I'm hoping a third-party vendor creates a PHP/MYSQL plug-in that I can use, or I might just have to switch to dreamweaver. You can also check the Adobe forums on their website for more details about the "loss" in this upgrade.

I have tried both Macromedia Dreamweaver and Adobe Golive and until Golive CS, I considered Dreamweaver to be superior. Now after using the latest versions of each product, I would have to favor Golive CS. It is quite simply every bit as powerful as dreaweaver and in some cases, far more powerful ( ie: the built in development capability for mobile device platforms ) I never would have given a Smart Phone compatible site a second thought - until Golive CS ( it just seems so easy now ). As an HTML coder, I am surprised to see that Golive codes pretty well. Very clean. However, I feel that Dreamweaver at least matches it in this regard and perhaps is even a cleaner coder as far as table generation goes when using the layers ( Dreamweaver's version of Golive's grid ). Other than in this one area, however, they both appear to code equally cleanly. It is the Smart Objects in Golive and particularly the integration with Photoshop that sold me. Sure, Dreamweaver will allow the addition of much of the same content, but certainly not as fast and it seems a little bit easier to place the content right where you need it to be with Golive. All in all, Golive and Dreamweaver run neck and neck, but the mobile features, Smart Objects and integration with superior graphics software seals the deal for me. The ability to change between a photoshop style interface and standard interface is a huge improvement as well.

I am 3/4 the way through the Classroom in a Book on Adobe GoLive CS. To say that the workbook and the software is NOT user-friendly is a gross understatement. It's probably easier to read a 1,000 page book on HTML, JAVA, etc. programming that slog through this software. And I haven't even installed it. Complexity does not imply sophistication, at least not in this situation. This is Rube Golberg at its worst. WIth hundreds of pop up windows and subwindows, none of it intuitive, one suspects that the company geeks had fun creating this darling of theirs without considering the consumer.

This is definitely not a software for a novice.

I'm a GoLive user from way back, when the product was called CyberStudio and the company that wrote it was called GoLive (before Adobe bought them out). GoLive got me through my early days of web design and development, when I just wasn't interested in learning code, and I got some pretty good, basic interactive web sites publsihed. The previous version, 6, was pretty good, but had some toolbar display glitches and very lame CSS (cascading style sheet) support. And as a loyal Adobe customer (I mean sucker) I forked out the one-seventy for the Upgrade version of CS, mostly to fix those display glitches and to be able to use CSS as I have now been doing in other sites for a while using Dreamweaver MX. Well, after installing GoLive CS I am extremely disappointed with this release, it's a total waste of money. Not only are there currently a miriad of other display glitches, code problems, freezes, crashes and bugs, which Adobe have yet to fix, but I also find their new CSS features to be extremely complex. Also despite what the marketing hype says, the Layout View does not allways display CSS styles as they will look in a web browser, which leads to even more frustration and confusion when trying to style a page. It's hit or miss and I've got better things to do than guess what it's going to look like.

Another reviewer of the upgrade version points out that in this version GoLive has eliminated the dynamic content technology that was in verson 6, but which remains in competitive programs like Dreamweaver.

If you're using GL6, at least wait for the bug-fixing 7.01, but check indendent product reviews first, such as MacWorld's Feb 04 review, and the Adobe GoLive user duscussions page (www.adobeforums.com) to see what other problems people are having before buying. If you are looking for a new web program, go with Macromedia's Dreamweaver instead. I'm a total convert, and their Contribute program is excellent software that your clients can use to update and maintain their own sites.

Macworld Buying advice summary (of this CS version) says... But while the program offers many advanced features for bulding and managing web sites, it's lackluster support for current CSS techniques and its sometimes complex and overwhelming interface are serious drawbacks."

Other Adobe CS apps like Illustrator and Photoshp are remarkable, refined products. GoLive CS is a dud, right out of the box.

Amazon can I get my money back? Anywone want a used copy?