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InDesign CS3 has an excellent balance of new design and performance features, and has finally surpassed QuarkXPress 7, so it¿s a must have upgrade.
Review From: Karen Tangeman, Oct 26, 2008
Overall Comments: Even though the menu structure remains almost identical, I think most designers are not going to be real happy learning a new interface, even though Adobe has made superb interface refinements. It can be frustrating when familiar interface elements change, but on the whole the changes do help you use multiple products more easily; and they are not radical differences that will interfere with your ability to use the software. If you use InDesign CS3 daily it won't take you long to pick up the changes; and once you do pick up the changes you will notice how great the new interface is, Nice touches include individual controls over the panels the new word for palettes and the collapsible docks that keep common features easily accessible without cluttering up your layout. I hope Adobe will take a look at only being able to view one full panel at a time when the dock is in icon-and-name or icon-only mode and not having the ability to apply lighting effects to text selections. These would be two areas I would love to see a fix for or updated in the next version of InDesign. Even though this is a Memory-hungry desk-top publishing software program, as a newsletter editor I would recommend this program in a heartbeat. I can now create style groups in the various style panels to help me manage my sometimes out-of-control styles in my document, I can create styles for tables and table cells, making consistent formatting and design changes easier to implement, and I can now import my master pages from one document to the other. And these are only a few of the new enhancements. The list of new features in InDesign CS3 should be compelling enough to convince you to upgrade from CS2 and the interface changes will at least save you from having to buy a second monitor for your palettes, too. InDesign CS3 is a Universal application that runs natively on both PowerPC-and Intel-based Macs.