Customer Reviews: Read 14 more reviews...
 Very Frustrating March 31, 2007
I am a college student majoring in Multimedia Publishing. This book was used as the Pagemaker textbook for my digital publishing class, and I found it very frustrating. The step by step instructions were very unclear on some parts and hard to follow. I felt as if steps were being skipped, and things just weren't explained well enough for me. Also, the fact that some of the needed fonts were missing from the disc did not help matters. If not for my class instructor, I'm not sure I would have learned anything with this book alone. I know this is supposed to be one of the better books out there, and it may be good for tips for those who are more experienced, but if you are a beginner like me, I STRONGLY suggest that you find another book!
 Where is the Birch Fornt? June 10, 2005
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
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.
PageMaker 7.0 Classroom in a Book July 27, 2004
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
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!
 Classroom In A Book - still the best series! May 7, 2003
13 out of 13 found this review helpful
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.
 Great book, but hard to find accompanying files April 1, 2003
12 out of 13 found this review helpful
I downloaded the e-book version of this title recently, and was very impressed with how easy it was to get started. However, I had to visit the publisher's website to download the Classroom files (you need them in order to do the exercises), and was only able to get the first three lessons. Very frustrating! I emailed and called the publisher to see if the files could be emailed to me (you can submit a form to receive the files on CD, but who knows how long that would take). To date, I have not received a response. Again, I like the book. It is very thorough, it is easy to read and follow, and after completing just the first 3 lessons, I already feel more confident using the program. But be prepared for a headache if you order the e-book!
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